A Song of Crickets Read online

all-nighter, Junior,” said Raycraft. “Eventually I’m going to have the money, the cocaine and your woman. How many times do I have to tell you? Think about this. How I choose to treat her might be affected by how cooperative you are tonight.” He walked across the room and straightened his hair with his hand as he examined himself in the mirror above the bureau. “Back home I’ve got a small farm. Just a hobby farm so that I don’t have to eat the shit they sell in the supermarkets. I pay a neighbor kid to take care of the animals and my garden when I’m away on business like I am now. Nice kid. Mexican boy.” Raycraft turned around to face me and leaned back against the bureau. “Every once in a while I need to kill a pig so that I can pack my freezer. I do it as quickly and efficiently as possible. I’m not some kind of animal loving nut but there’s no reason for the pig to suffer, just a quick slashing of the throat and then you stand clear of their hooves and let them bleed out. I really wish you’d let me do the same for you tonight. I can stay the night and we can play this game if you want. Not that big of a deal to me. But I’d really like to get back on the road before your wife does something stupid like involve other people – cost them their lives too. When the body count grows it’s just a bigger mess for everybody.

  I sat in the chair hopelessly wishing that I had one last chance to protect Dannie. Wishing there was some way that I could take Raycraft from this earth with me, keep him from ever finding her, but deep inside, where answers contain more truth than hope, I was certain this monster would find his way to her.

  I’d always wanted a son. I would’ve been thrilled with a daughter, but I often prayed at night for a son, and now I was going to have a child and I’d never even see if it was a boy or a girl. Never get a chance to show him the affection that my father never felt like giving me. He wasn’t mean and he wasn’t continually drunk, although he drank pretty regularly, he just never seemed to care whether he had a wife and children or not, just ignored us. Didn’t smile or laugh with us, or even talk to us unless he was giving us some kind of an order or directions. Treated our mother the same way, so one morning she was just gone. My brother and I could never figure out why she didn’t take us with her. Our life with him continued the same. The only time he spent with us was at dinner where we were never allowed to talk. Finish your food and then get to your chores and homework, he’d say, and then, he’d retreat to his room for the night. It was like he was counting the days until he was rid of us. Maybe he had been born like that, soulless, the walking dead, just like Raycraft. Why had our mother married him? What did she ever see in him? Why did she do that to herself? Why did she do that to us? I would never get the opportunity to prove that I was nothing like him. I was alive and my child would’ve been sure of it.

  “Stubborn.” Raycraft sighed before turning around and rummaging through the hotel bureau. “You know what I really hate about this job?” He picked an ashtray out of the top drawer and pounded it into his palm a couple of times before looking as though a thought had passed and dropping it back where it had come from. “The mess.”

  He opened drawers and examined the contents before settling on a pen with the motel’s name on it, as well as its slogan, THE LUCKY MOTEL - FEELING LUCKY? He came back and sat down across from me, making sure to show me the bright red print on the pen. “Probably not, eh, Junior?” He rolled up the sleeve on my wounded arm and ripped the bandages off. He looked at the greenish pus and tilted my arm so that the excess would run off on the floor where it formed a syrupy puddle on the carpet.

  “This must be getting pretty sore.” He looked up at me. “Yeah?”

  My heart was beating so hard that I could see it pounding through the front of my shirt.

  “Looks like you did your best to clean this wound up but it seems that infection may be setting in anyway.” He rolled my arm back and forth examining it. “Hell of a thing, trying to doctor yourself. Had to do it a time or two myself. Never got too good at it though. You can’t ever seem to do a decent job of cleaning a wound when it’s your own. Just too damn painful.” He stabbed the pen into the bullet hole and twisted. Strange pleading noises escaped me and I was unable to reel them back. “I know it hurts.” He dug the pen in deeper and probed the nerves and it made sucking and plunging noises. “If you could just tell me the things I need to know I could put an end to all this.”

  After the wound was bleeding profusely again he decided to take a break.

  “I’m so tired of this. Tired of tough little cowboys like you that don’t want to listen. You don’t seem to understand that it always ends the same. Drug addicts are sloppy. That makes them really easy to hunt. We just don’t need to do all of this.” He got up and walked back toward the desk. “And besides if you were planning on-”

  I leaned forward and vomited. The partially digested remains of a couple of gas station burritos and a bag of barbeque flavor corn nuts sprayed across the floor, nearly reaching his shoes. He shook his head in disgust and disappointment, thinking again about the clean up he’d have before he left the LUCKY MOTEL.

  “Well, I’m going to let you have a moment to yourself to consider what I’ve said while I step outside and get some fresh air. Do I need to gag you again or do you think I can treat you like a man and trust you not to scream?” He paused. “Gag off?”

  I nodded.

  “We’ll get back to work in a minute.”

  He walked out and I sat by myself staring at the pen that was sticking out of my arm as it bobbed back and forth to the rhythm of my labored breathing. The name of the motel was covered by flesh but I could still read the motel slogan, FEELING LUCKY?

  Time seemed frozen as I dreaded Raycraft’s return. After a time the door opened, very slowly, nearly silently, and all I could hear from beyond the room was a song of crickets, and I smelled cinnamon.