Page 45 of Making His Bones

Gray

Now that Upton Pitchfork had me, I couldn’t grill him. I had to keep pretending to be a clueless tourist.

The trailer he held me in was fucking stifling. He must’ve been used to it, because he came and went with no sweat. He tasked a Mexican kid—well, around eighteen years old—with holding the assault rifle on me. I couldn’t analyze the kid with any degree of assurance that he was too meek to actually shoot me, so I stayed.

He gave me no water—nothing. The kid could drink as much room temperature water as he wanted, though. Upton Pitchfork apparently called his dad Bud to come down and ID me. That was fine because I’d never met the motherfucker. But then I taunted him.

“Why don’t you get your pal Sheriff DeFreeze to come down here? He’ll tell you this is called kidnaping.”

“Good idea, homeboy.” For some reason, this farmer kept calling me “homeboy.” “I’ll just do that. Then he can arrest you for trespassing.”

At that point I’d be glad to be taken away in a car, even in cuffs, but maybe not by DeFreeze. One look and he’d remember me from the Scarlet Dome sit-down. He’d do anything to get revenge on me for having made him shit his pants. He was going to make me his bitch. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought it up, but it was the only way I could think out of there.

I trusted Knoxie, but I didn’t have much faith in Galileo or Tobiah to extract me from that pit—unless they dropped an actual helicopter on the trailer. The main entrance was hopeless, with that armed ex-con guarding the way.

It sounded like Upton actually did call DeFreeze. I sat in that folding chair while outside the trailer door Pitchfork said things like, “Yeah, Dave. I think you know this guy. No ID on him because he flew into my property. Yeah, flew. Not BASE jumping, something like it with a suit with wings. Come on down. Rodrigo’s at the gate.”

I despaired even more. I stood, having nothing more to do than to look at the titles on a very small bookshelf attached to the wall.

“Ai,” said the kid, training the rifle on me.

“I’m just looking!” I said plaintively, shrugging. “Where am I gonna go? Not out that door!”

The books—or I should say, manuals—were predictable. Moonshiners Manual. The Compleat Distiller. Moonshine Distiller’s Training Manual. White Power.

Since I’d never need to know how to make moonshine, I took down the white power book. I was standing there in the stuffy trailer reading George Lincoln Rockwell’s take on late modern Western Civilization—shock jock and ranty, if you need to know—when my head began to take flight.

I knew right away it was the lack of air in the trailer. Not that there was much more air outside, but it was fresh air. I nearly didn’t make it back to my folding chair before breaking out in a cold sweat. The book slipped from my fingers and clattered to the floor. Still, my head was somewhere up past the ceiling. It was the strangest feeling, like I was nine feet tall.

“What’s wrong?” asked the thug kid. “What’s the matter?”

“Fainting,” I whispered. “Passing out.”

The kid called for Pitchfork, who came stomping in. His Timberland boots sounded a hundred miles off.

“All right, what you faking?” yelled the corn farmer, before backhanding me across the face.

Fuck fuckity fuck. In my feeble state, his blow felt like he’d knocked my block off.

It seriously felt like he’d whacked a bruise to my brain, something I didn’t need at the moment, especially since I was still bleeding from my wrist and ribs. But it brought me back to reality, enough so that I sprung to my feet and nearly grabbed the fucker by the throat. The kid with the rifle stood too, looking frantically down the barrel. I did have the feeling he’d never shot anyone, and at the moment I was willing to take that chance.

“That’s it, you worthless piece of human excrement!” I yelled. “You fucking shoot a fucking innocent bystander, then you take me hostage! My lawyer is going to be very interested in hearing about this.” I did take a handful of his filthy dirt-caked Henley shirt. I shook him so energetically his stupid skull knocked a Blake Shelton poster cockeyed.

I was obviously the more powerful, but that didn’t stop Upton from trying. Snarling, he grabbed my wrist in both his fists and screwed them, like he was giving me an Indian burn. It worked. It hurt. “You fucking tourist! Shoot him, Sal, shoot him!”

“Right,” I growled, “that’ll look real good when DeFreeze gets here. Body of famous actor discovered in moonshine trailer.” I remembered I had to pretend I knew nothing about rotgut. But by now, he’d made it even more obvious. “Who you making this booze for, anyway?”

Upton got in a knee to my groin. It wasn’t a square hit, but regardless, it whacked me flat on my ass. Almost in slow motion, I crashed back into the folding chair, sprawled like a big game rug on the floor. I actually saw stars from hitting my head on what I later found to be some kind of metal cash box.

Great. More blood.

I struggled to get to my feet as Sal poked me with the gun barrel and Upton kicked me—again, in the ribs, right square where the injury was.

“Agh!” I cried out, holding my abdomen.

I think then I knew I was down for the count. My bruised brain was still flying high and I struggled to even fill my lungs with air. Stop fucking kicking me. You don’t kick a Bare Boner. A Bare Boner kicks you.

I don’t know how I got the presence of mind, but I managed to grab his stupid fucking ankle. I yanked, and the corn-fed hosepipe was down for ten. His ass now smashed Sal’s chair.