Lights Out

The truck seemed to be heading south. Eddie confronted the possibility that while there had to be a connection between Dr. Messer, Senor Paz, El Rojo, and the hundred-dollar bill, the ponytailed man might have nothing to do with it. Why would he, especially since Messer hadn’t even entered 719? Maybe it was only the outside of 719 that mattered. Julio could be on his way home to the wife and kids, or to a bowling alley, or, more probably, to a second job at a meat packer’s. A beer can flew out of the cab, and then another.

Eddie was soaked and shivering by the time the truck left the turnpike. They followed a two-lane road, going more slowly now. The sky lost its orange glow, went black. The only light came from headlight beams that flashed from time to time across the cages. Eddie caught glimpses of the chickens; they appeared headless, as they soon might be. More beer cans flew by, faint whizzing shadows in the night.

Time passed, how much time Eddie didn’t know. His watch was on Prof’s wrist, locked up in F-Block. Eddie was wet, cold, unsure; but free, and therefore happy, right?

The truck slowed, down to a speed where Eddie could have jumped off safely. He considered it, and was still considering it when they turned onto a dirt road and bumped through a wooded flatland. The trees stretched overhead, catching some of the rain. Under their shelter, the chickens came to life, shifting around in their cages, nervous again. Just like inmates: catatonic when things were at their worst; agitation always following slight improvements.

They were alone on the dirt road. Five or six miles passed before the truck came to a stop. Eddie rose, peered over the side. The headlights shone on a fence, not especially high but made of barbed wire, stretching out of sight in both directions; a closed gate on which hung a sign-“Simon Poultry Farms”; a gatehouse with a motorcycle parked inside; and a man standing in the road with an automatic weapon over his shoulder and a shotgun in his hands. He approached the truck.

The man spoke in Spanish. “Late,” he said.

“You drive in this piss,” the driver told him.

“Try standing in it all fucking night,” answered the man with the guns. He opened the gate, backed into the shadows. The truck rolled through.

The truck mounted a long, low rise, turned right off the main road, came down in a clearing. In the changing angles of the headlights, Eddie picked out an old two-story farmhouse, a barn, outbuildings. The truck passed the barn, turned toward the house, slowed. The door of the house opened, framing a short, round man in a yellow rectangle of light. Eddie hopped off the truck, slipped on wet grass, came up running. A fruit tree, gnarled and bare, grew between the house and the barn. Eddie crouched behind it.

The short, round man unfurled an umbrella and walked to the truck. Julio and the driver got out. The driver was a big man, perhaps six and a half feet tall. The short, round man went as close to him as the umbrella would allow.

“You’re late,” he said. He spoke Spanish, but Eddie recognized his voice: Senor Paz.

“It’s the weather.”

“And you’ve been drinking.”

“Just one beer on the way.”

Paz reached up from under the umbrella and slapped the driver’s face with the back of his hand, the way he’d slapped Eddie.

“Sorry,” said the driver.

Paz wasn’t listening. He had moved in front of Julio. “You too,” he said. “I can smell it.”

“Not me.”

Paz spoke to the driver. “Hit him.”

The driver threw a punch at the ponytailed man’s head, knocking him down.

Paz said, “Now get busy,” walked back into the house, leaving the door open.

The driver helped Julio to his feet. “Did it have to be that hard?” asked Julio.

“Just doing my job,” the driver replied.

The driver went around to the back of the truck, climbed up, began hoisting off the rear slatted sections and stacking them to the side. Julio went into the house, returned with an empty cardboard box. The driver opened one of the cages, tossed the chicken and the newspaper flooring onto the ground, picked up the cage and dumped it out into the cardboard box. The chicken skittered across the grass and into the barn.

The driver opened another cage and went through the same routine, tossing out the chicken and the newspaper, dumping what was left into the cardboard box. He kept doing that until Julio said, “Enough,” and carried the box into the house. He came back with an empty one, and they did it all again.

And twice more. The last time the driver followed Julio into the house and closed the door. Eddie came out of the shadows.

He made a wide circle around the house, approached it from the back. Lights shone through the windows on both floors. Eddie dropped to the wet ground and crawled to the nearest one, raised his head above the sill.