“No. You’re going to go get the money. I’m going to stay here with the girl—what’s her name?”
“Abbie.”
“She and I are going to stay here for the two minutes you’re gone.”
“It’ll take more than that.”
“More than what?”
“Two minutes.”
“I’ll give you ten, then I’ll cut off one of her kneecaps.” He nods down at Abbie’s placid-looking face, which suggests she might be dreaming pleasantly. “Another five, another kneecap. A joint-to-joint thing, get it?”
John says, “I’ll go as fast as I can.”
“I know you will, John. Now, where exactly is it?”
“On the mountain side the trailer. Up in the woods.”
“You’ll point me there so that I can sit here with Abbie and watch you go up and come back.”
“You’ll have to move the far end the deck, past the trailer’s edge.”
“That’s not a problem. Now, John, where’s your truck? I’m told you have a truck.”
“Up there with it.”
“You’ll bring it down for me, won’t you? So that I can borrow it?”
“Yes.”
He reaches into the sheath with his free hand and pulls out the knife again. “I’m not like the Hen, John, who gets off on cutting people up, okay? I admit, I’m not at all pleased that you killed Ingrid—she was a sweet kid and a tremendous fuck—and because of it I don’t think you and I could ever be good friends, but you say it was an accident and that you gave her a proper burial and I accept that. So, about Ingrid, bygones are bygones.” He nods at the rail. “Fingers splayed, John, like I asked. Unless you’d prefer I take an eye. Would you rather I take an eye?”
John doesn’t say. Adrenaline and bile race into his stomach, so that for a few seconds he’s afraid he’s going to be sick. He glances at Abbie and wonders how long someone who’s had done to them whatever Waylon did to her stays unconscious. “How do I know you won’t hurt her once you got the money?”
“I’ve just explained to you, John, that was the Hen’s trip. Not mine. I’m a businessman. That’s all. Like every other employed slob in the world, I got people I got to answer to. I need my money back, John, or I’m the next one gets put in the ground. That’s how life works. Get paid, so you can pay. You think what I sold to the Hen was a gift to me? No. Life is a big wheel—somebody fucks with a cog like you did, John, and the whole wheel is shot. So, I’ve got to fix the wheel, okay? How am I going to do that? First you need to know that the girl will look like a totem pole if you’re not back with the money in ten minutes. Second, I need to know that while you’re up there in the outback that should you get to feeling like Davy Crockett and scrounge yourself up a musket and a lead ball, I can feel secure that the ball won’t end up in my brainpan. So what’s it to be, John? I take one of ten fingers, leaving you nine? Or one of two eyes, leaving you a cyclops? I know what I’d do.”
The focus of John’s thoughts is like a kitten curled up in the only sun-warmed corner of a dank, dark house: he won’t be responsible for another girl’s death. He stares into Waylon’s anvil-hard face, crisscrossed by pockmarks and tiny rivulets of sweat. “Did you think this son of a bitch was handsome?” his silent voice angrily asks Ingrid Banes. “Din’ ya see them eyes, colder than anything wild I ever hunted? Or was you just drunk with all his danger?” He lays an unwavering hand palm-down on the rail, then slowly spreads his fingers. Against searing pain, guilt will be his amulet.
“Nice try, John.”
“What?”
“I watched you open the door earlier, remember?”
John gazes blankly at him.
“You’re right-handed, are you not?”
John nods grudgingly.
“That’s the one needs altering, then.” Waylon smiles knowledgeably. His teeth appear well cared for and straight. His slicked-back hair is black as a beaver’s pelt. Momentarily sliding the knife beneath his gun arm, he reaches his free hand into his back pocket and pulls out a linen handkerchief. “You know, John, trigger finger.”
John takes his left hand from the rail and replaces it with his right. He spreads his fingers so that, of the five, his index finger is the closest to Waylon. He remembers his father once telling him about an old Iroquois trick whereby a captured brave, to divert pain inflicted by his torturers, would will the pain into the empty shell of a turtle. Waylon flaps the handkerchief in the air, then carefully lays it over the rail next to John’s hand. Still covering John with the pistol, he takes up the knife again. John empties his mind of everything but an orange-and-black box-turtle shell. Waylon quickly leans forward and, just above the lowest joint, deftly slices off John’s index finger.