(III)
It’s heavenly, he thought. He stared up in wonder,
drinking up the sight of the stars. My whole
life is heavenly. . . .
The night couldn’t
have been more beautiful, nor could his love. The God that he
believed in was much more nebulous than the God of most people, but
just as real. Wilfrud knew, in fact, that they were all essentially
the same, and it was to that great ethereal and omnipresent being
that he now offered his unbounded thanks.
Ethel, his wife,
puttered in the woods, focused on their task. It was Wilfrud who
was the dreamer of the pair, the introspective one, which she
often, in her loving way, dismissed as laziness. But it’s only my love that makes me a dreamer, he
thought, and she knew that, of course.
Besides, she was the
better diviner.
Divination could be
very effective in obtaining knowledge of that which one desired, so
long as the practitioners were faithful people. Faith was in the
heart, in the soul. Wilfrud and Ethel had been the clan’s diviners
for decades, since their late teens. They solicited the spirits of
nature tonight for nothing more complex than finding honey morels
for the weekend’s clan banquet. Ethel made a delectable mushroom
roux that specifically depended on this rare edible fungus, but
they were very difficult to find.
Diviners, however,
could find them a little easier than others.
Earlier they’d both
prayed over the boiled pig knuckle, and now Ethel meandered about
the woods, holding the clean bone in a cupped hand. It was not with
anything like tactility by which she read the telltale signal—it
would be more like a vibration in her head. She was naked, of
course, to further appease the spirits, and Wilfrud’s eyes couldn’t
resist that raw beauty of hers as she stepped through the brambles,
sensing the air. Her bare skin shone so white in the moonlight; it
looked so perfect. No, neither of them was young anymore, but
looking at her now, in the quiet night’s glow, Wilfrud got short of
breath. He couldn’t be more grateful to God for giving him so
beautiful a wife.
The decades had
blessed her body; she didn’t look at all like a woman in her
mid-fifties, and the gray had barely touched her long, raven-black
hair. Even her bosom barely sagged; her breasts glowed like lambent
orbs in the moon’s light, centered with large, dark nipples. About
her neck hung the pendant he’d made for her when they’d gotten
married, a deep blue-and-scarlet pontica stone that diviners and
mediums often wore, to maximize their visions. The stone hung
between her breasts and seemed to change color when her own
passions inflamed. Wilfrud himself wore the cross she’d given him
just as long ago: two meticulously carved shavings from an eddo
root.
For a moment Wilfrud
felt bolted to the ground; he couldn’t move; he could only swallow
up this nighttime image of her. Oh,
heaven, he thought. I am such a lucky
man. . . .
She pivoted on her
bare feet, not looking down but staring out into the night,
listening for the secrets it would tell her, and then in a second
she quickly got down on her knees and bent over. Wilfrud almost
collapsed now, his desires reeling. This alternate glimpse of
her—kneeling, naked, buttocks jutting—was the last thing Wilfrud
needed to see just then. He was supposed to be helping her. . .
.
“Oooh, Wilfrud,
look!” she nearly squealed in excitement. Her free hand tilled the
soft earth between the vee of a tree’s roots. “We’re finding so
many tonight!”
Only a woman after my own heart could be so enthused over
finding morels, he realized absurdly. He walked over with
his collection bag, tried to focus, but only remained dizzy in the
fugue of his passion. Her breasts bobbed when she jerked upright,
grinning. She extended her earth-smudged hand, which was full of
morels.
“Five
more!”
He smiled back, so
distracted, and put the morels in the bag, then . . .
He dropped the
bag.
“What are you doing?”
she exclaimed.
“You know,” he
whispered, embracing her. He urged her back against the tree, his
groin pushing into hers. His voice was parched in his need. “Let me
make love to you—right here. In the forest, with the moon and stars
watching.” His hands ran up her bare sides; sweat misted her skin
from the warm night. She felt so soft. . . .
He was tasting her
neck, breathing hard already. The jasmine essence in her hair
stiffened him at once.
Ethel giggled. Her
fingers slipped around his back. She pressed her breasts more
urgently against his chest, then raised one leg and half wrapped it
around him. “Hmm,” she breathed into his ear. “So you want to take
me right here, on the ground?”
“Yes,
yes!”
“Hmm, let me think
about that. . . .”
Her thigh slid up and
down his leg. Her hand squeezed his buttocks; then it came back
around, dawdled over his chest, then began to pop open his shirt
buttons.
“Let me think,” she
repeated.
Wilfrud was going
nuts in his passion now. He kept trying to kiss her, but each time
their lips met she jerked away, smiling. Eventually her fingers
spidered down his unbuttoned chest, lingered a moment, then
proceeded to his crotch, which she slowly—and excruciatingly—began
to caress.
“My love, my love, my
love,” he kept murmuring into her neck. “Please! Now!”
“Hmm, yes, let me
think . . .” As her fingers were toying with the top button of his
trousers, were just about to open them—
“On second thought,”
she said abruptly, “no.”
Her hand pulled away,
and she gently began to push him back.
“Don’t torment me!”
he pleaded.
“Wilfrud, you’re so
much fun to tease!” She was grinning at him in the moonlight, her
bare breasts standing right out. Then she picked up the collection
bag and gave it back to him. “We’ve got to get back to our
gathering.” The grin sharpened. “We’ll make love later. When we get
back home.”
Wilfrud groaned, his
eyes rolling in agony.
“Thinking about me
more will make you want me more,” she cooed at him.
“No, it won’t! I want
you now!”
“Oh, Wilfrud. You’re
a wonderful husband, but honestly, sometimes you’re just like a
goat. You can wait a bit longer.” And then she disappeared around a
stout tree to continue her search.
Wilfrud stood like a
horny fool. Women, he thought
uselessly. Oh, how they love to make idiots of
men.
He shuffled after her
into thicker woods. Denser networks of boughs overhead drained off
the moonlight—he could barely see. After a time he wanted to call
out but thought better of it: he mustn’t distract her while she was
divining. Instead, then, he filled his mind back up with images of
her nakedness, her breasts and the pebble-hard nipples, all that
smooth, warm, white skin that he could indulge in, the nest of down
between her legs soft as kitten fur. . . .
Minutes more, and he
still hadn’t found her. He stood and listened . . . and heard no
traces of her footfalls.
“Sweetheart?” he
finally called out.
Ethel didn’t
answer.
“Ethel?”
Another step,
then—
“Oof!”
He stumbled and
fell.
What a clumsy clod. . . . He must’ve tripped on a
downed limb. But when he put his hand out to push himself up it
landed on a bare foot. Alarmed, he patted upward, up a bare leg. .
. .
In slivers of
moonlight coming though the trees, he saw Ethel lying prone on the
forest floor.
“Ethel! Are you all
right?” He slid up to her, got an arm around her back to lean her
up.
But her head just
lolled on her shoulders.
And he noticed blood
on her forehead.
No!
Wilfrud felt crazed
in the sudden fear. “Ethel! Ethel!” He shook her. “Please be all
right!”
A voice snapped
behind him. “Don’t worry, Squatter. She ain’t dead. All’s I done is
conk her lights out.”
In the dimmest
darkness, he spotted the figure standing over him. Enraged, Wilfrud
attempted to jump up, to fight.
“Yes, sir. Conked the
bitch’s lights right out with this here beer bottle.”
Conk!
The unseen swipe
knocked Wilfrud out cold.
It was a harsh
gagging sound that Wilfrud regained consciousness to. Grainy, sooty
vision began to fire in his eyes; each time his heart beat, a heavy
thud of pain throbbed in his head. In a
few more moments, he could see. . . .
Ethel lay naked on
her back in some deep, moonlit clearing. A beefy man humped
vigorously between her sprawled legs, his overalls pulled down to
show pasty buttocks.
The atrocity raged
but for a split second before Wilfrud’s mind managed to separate
the horror from logic. What happened to
me? The pain in his head felt like a nail had been driven
into his brain. He and Ethel had been gathering morels, hadn’t
they? Yes, the clan cookout was coming up. And she’d dashed off
into darker woods with her divining bone. That’s when I found her, he remembered.
I tripped over her and—
That figure . . . All
Wilfrud recalled was the stocky shadow before he’d been hit in the
head with something, and now he was waking up . . . to
this.
Wilfrud realized now
that he’d been tied to a tree, his wrists bound behind the trunk
with rope, and a shorter length of rope had been tied around his
head—between his teeth—to gag him. In horrid glimpses, he noticed
that Ethel had been gagged similarly. All either of them could do
was croak out some feeble noises, nothing even close to a scream
that could be heard by others.
The man raping his
wife looked over his shoulder while his fornication didn’t miss a
beat. “Oh, looky there, sweetie. Your husband’s finally woked his
old ass up.” A chunky face grinned back. “Hey, Wilfrud? You don’t
mind me raping the holy ever-livin’ shit outta this old bag you got fer a wife, do
ya?”
Wilfrud’s eyes bugged
in rage; he recognized the portly face at once: Junior, one of the
Caudill boys. Wilfrud struggled uselessly against his bonds, the
rope digging into his wrists, and when he tried to shout, the only
vocal objection he could muster was more of the same
croaking.
Worse were Ethel’s
croaks. Junior was choking her with the leather cord of the pontica
stone around her neck. He’d twist the cord down tight till her face
darkened and her tongue began to protrude, but just before she’d
either pass out or die, he’d release it—to rape her harder. He
wanted her alive for the entire ordeal.
But why was he doing
this?
And what would happen
when he was done?
Junior began to
grunt, twisting the pontica cord harder, and then his pelvic
thrusts slowed and stopped.
He straggled to his
feet, hitched up the overalls, and dusted himself off. “Ain’t
exactly the best piece a’ ass I’ve had, but not bad fer an old box.
What is this bitch, Wilfrud? About sixty? Me, I prefer ’em a tad
younger, like about ten, but in a pinch? Any piece a’ ass is better
than none, huh?”
Junior belted out a
piglike noise that sufficed for a laugh, but then his eyes darted
back down to Ethel, who now lay utterly still. “Aw, shit! Don’t
tell me she’s fuckin’ dead! I need her
still kickin’ for the rest a’ the party !” He dropped to his knees,
slapped her face several times, then put an ear to her bare chest
to listen for a heartbeat. “Whew!” he said next. “Ya lucked out,
Wilfrud. Her ticker’s still tickin’.” He stood back up. “Let’s give
her a splash or two a’ water in the face, to spark her up. . .
.”
Wilfrud roared in his
throat through the gag, surging against the bonds. Junior had
opened his fly and was now urinating liberally into Ethel’s face.
The revolting process did indeed revive her, soaking
her.
“Well, there goes
another six-pack!”
By now Wilfrud was
oblivious to the pain of the flesh around his wrists grinding away.
He brokenly barked out through his gag, “Cut me loose! Cut me
loose!”
Junior zipped back
up. “What’s that, Wilfrud? Cain’t rightly understand ya, what with
the gag. Oh! You want me to cut ya loose?” Another piglike guffaw.
“Come on! Why in tarnation would I wanna do that?”
Now Junior leaned
against a tree, arms casually crossed. “You don’t even know this,
Wilfrud, but in yer own little way you n’ this creepy old tramp are
playin’ a part in a big plan that’ll
make things around here a damn sight better fer everybody.” He
scratched his belly. “Well, I should say almost everybody, ‘cos things just got a damn sight
worse fer you and the little missus.” Junior looked up at the moon
in the sky. “And I’m afraid it’s gettin’ late. Time for this party
to end, don’t ya think?”
Ethel shuddered in
the dirt, hacking up urine through the gag. Without a moment’s
hesitation, Junior reached behind the tree and pulled out an
inordinately large fire ax, then stepped up, parted his legs,
hoisted it up over his head in a great arc—
“Nooo!” Wilfrud
gagged.
—and—
Thhhhwunk!
—dropped the massive
blade into Ethel’s belly. Then—
Thhhwunk! Thhhwunk!
—two more downward
plunges of the blade cut her naked body in half in a straight line
just above her hips.
Her bare heels
thunked in the soil, white legs quivering. The upper half
convulsed, back trying to arch reflexively.
Wilfrud was choking
on his tongue, straining ever harder against his bonds, but all for
nothing. He choked out some final, faulty bellows as the whites of
his eyes hemorrhaged red in outrage.
Junior grinned, his
own eyes beaming down. He set the ax aside. “How’s that for a piece
a’ work?”
Ethel’s legs finally
fell still, while the upper half of her body remained miraculously
alive. She actually managed to flip herself over and began to crawl
toward Junior.
“Bitch’s got some
spunk; I’ll give her that,” Junior remarked. He grabbed the pendant
cord, hoisted her up, then looped the cord over the crook of a
broken branch. He stood back to watch as Ethel slowly strangled
against the tree, innards uncoiling.
“God, that was fun. .
. .”
By now Wilfrud’s
horror and exertion left him limp. Junior unsheathed a buck knife
and approached. “Her ticket’s punched, so I guess it’s time to
punch yours too, Wilfrud.”
“Uuugh!” went
Wilfrud.
Junior pigstuck him
low with the knife, one deep jab just below the navel.
“But I got tell ya,”
Junior went on, “all this choppin’ and chokin’ and stabbin’s got my
dog barkin’ again, if you know what I mean.” He chuckled, showing
brown teeth. “And there ain’t exactly anyone around who’s gonna
call me a pervert, huh?”
Wilfrud groaned in
the lowest agony, blood and bile eddying from his
wound.
Junior shrugged and
approached the sprawled legs on the ground. “So I just say . . .
what the hell!”
He lowered his
overalls again, then crawled between the legs, and this was what
Wilfrud Hild got to watch for the remaining ten minutes it took him
to die.