Gun Work

They roughhoused Barney about once every three meals after they started feeding him; mostly brown mystery paste in a tortilla. Diarrhea rollicked his GI tract. His tormentors never spoke except to laugh or exchange insults with one another, so Barney decided to speak to them:

“Hey, maricón, ¿donde está mi television?”

A fat guy named Zefir kicked Barney in the gut and Barney vomited on him.

Past a certain point — pretty quickly, if you have learned how to take a bruising — actual pain becomes a vague true north. Barney knew what he had provoked and had prepared mentally for the onslaught.

For the first time, his jailors regarded him queerly, as though they suddenly did not have the upper hand. That was all the victory Barney sought from that little gambit.

Next up: “Hey, Sucio: ¡Oye, tu madre!”

No complex insult was needed. Mexican invective was extremely touchy on the subject of anyone’s mother, and the blackest curse was always assumed. You did not have to call her a whore or suggest a dirty coupling; all you had to do was say “madre” instead of “mama” to get your target to blow like a volcano.

Sucio actually punched one of the other guys to get up close and personal with Barney that time. He shoved, then struck, a smaller fellow apparently nicknamed Condorito, who had an unfortunately prevalent Mexican body type: low-slung, bow-legged, no ass to speak of. Condorito went submissive, then beat Barney up third in line.

While he was bludgeoning Barney, Sucio unleashed his idea of a poisonous stream of rancid insult. He went crimson and saliva sprayed. What he failed to realize was that he had violated the hitherto-uncrossed line, and was yelling at Barney directly, thus acknowledging his existence.

When his compatriots pulled Sucio off Barney, Barney recognized another important watershed: They did not want to kill him yet, either right away or accidentally.

Between meals and punching-bag sessions, Barney gathered other useful intelligence.

One of the guys — Zefir — made reference to other rooms with other prisoners, some of which did have television sets. Which made the building an operative concern as a hostage hotel, thereby helping Barney define where he was. Some of the legitimate or high-ticket captives apparently interested Zefir, a porcine man fond of making fornicatory gestures with his hands. ¿Chicas, retozonas, panochas, papayas muy bonitas, eh?

Another had said something about a courtyard inside the building, which implied that while fortressed from the street, an area within the structure was open to sky like an atrium.

A further slip of Condorito’s tongue had clarified other “guests” as actual hostages (rehéns).

Sucio had appropriated Barney’s Army .45 and had waved it in his face on several occasions. Since he kept it shoved into his waistband, the bore smelled like his crotch, which was no treat at all.

Several days passed and while the casual beatings continued, they came with no actual threat or grisly detail of what Barney’s eventual fate might be. No ransom, no payoff, nothing. Also no change of clothing, no bath, and no room service. Barney began to feel like a moldering corpse that lacked the sense to know it was dead.

It was important for him to remember the name Felix Rainer, although most days, Barney could not recover enough short-term memory to know why. He repeated the name to himself while bunched into a corner on his filthy sleeping pad, rocking back and forth. Felix Rainer. Carl Ledbetter. And Carl’s wife, Erica. Every body-blow was another entry on a past-due bill that was slowly, excruciatingly becoming more expensive.

It was generally a bad sign when one of Barney’s jailors showed up alone. Today it was Mojica.

Usually, a solo entrance was the cue for some off-the-books sadism, or at the very least, a harsh kick in the balls laced with tons of spittled obscenities about Barney’s madre.

“Hey, you. Guy. You awake?”

Barney did not know Mojica could speak, let alone speak passable English. He rolled up from his fetal curl on the floor. Something about his attitude threw out defense warnings on a subdermal level; he could not help that, or prevent or disguise it. It did nothing to dispel the flies intent on eating every drop of his sweat, or the gnats (what he’d heard called “see-nots” in the American South) they kept trying to set up housekeeping in his eyes. He didn’t even want to think about what was living in his hair by now. Or infesting his groin, or tape-worming up his anus while he tried to sleep.

“Listen, man, I’m not here to hurt you.”

Oh, great, I feel so much more cuddly now.

“Seriously.” Mojica chanced a couple of steps nearer. Not quite within grabbing distance, given the chain on Barney’s leg.

“Listen. You don’t gotta say nothing if you don’t want to.”