Penitente - Part 2

By Jane Hammons

"It’s just me. Chappy," he tried explaining again as he followed Dunway. "I’m out for a while."

"Out for a while," Starr choked out spitefully. "They let murderers out on field trips?"

"Shut up or I’ll kill you," Dunway laughed. He liked the kid’s spunk.

"He kills people all the time," Chapman warned Starr. She had an ugly mouth just like her mother’s. He used to knock VeraMae around for talking back to him like that. Chapman wandered about the living room, picking up ashtrays, sitting in one chair then another, familiarizing himself with the place again.

"Crazy shit," Starr muttered.

"Where’s your mother?" Dunway asked.

"Good question," Starr said. Then she bit her lip realizing that might be a dumb answer. "I don’t know exactly," she mumbled, hoping Dunway hadn’t paid any attention to what she said. Adults usually didn’t. "Her and Bill'll be back for supper. They said they would." She was a terrible liar, always caught in her lies.

"Bill," Dunway called out to Chapman. "Hear that Fat Chap. You’ve been replaced. By Bill."

"Replaced," chuckled Chapman. His fleshy hands fluttered about his face like plump dying pigeons. Reeeeeplaced. He said the word long and slow inside his head. As if he’d ever been anyplace anyhow. He fluffed up the cushions on the couch and picked up a candy wrapper.

"Yeah, you clean this dump up," Dunway said, "and I’ll get us some food. Come on," pulling Starr along in a chokehold. He looked closely at her. She looked kind of like the hamster his dorky brother had kept when they were kids. "You’re uglier than your Mama," he said, having no idea what her mother looked like. He watched her nose twitch and the skin over her eyes wrinkle. Just like that idiot’s hamster.

"I am not uglier than Mama," Starr protested. She knew her mother was ugly. She’d heard her mother’s boyfriends tease her about the way she looked. But there was something about her mother men liked. And Starr knew what it was. She was afraid men were going to like her that way, too. But she wouldn’t like them back. As far as she could tell, there weren’t many men in the world worth getting worked up over. Chappy was the nicest man her mother ever went with and he was a mess. She watched him lumber off down the hallway. "You keep him out of my room," Starr said as Dunway pulled her into the kitchen. "I don’t want him messing with my stuff."

"Jesus, what a stink," Dunway said. The kitchen smelled like rotting garbage and dirty dishes.

"Not much to eat here. That’s why Mama and Bill went to the grocery store."

"Oh, so they’re out shopping, are they? Don’t look like anybody’s mother’s been around here for a while. Not unless your mother’s a pig. Is your mother a pig?" Dunway spat on the floor.

"Gross," Starr whispered to herself. She began filling a crumpled grocery sack with food from the pantry.

Chapman wandered along the hallway looking at the dime store prints tacked up on the wall. He recognized one of them. Blue Boy. His grandmother had that on her wall back home in Virginia. Grandma. Mama Sugar. Mama Shug. She loved him before she found about what he’d done with that little boy.

He went into an airless, messy room he knew had to be VeraMae’s. He opened the closet and rummaged through the clothes, pulling a thick down vest off its hanger. Keep Dunway warm. As he put the vest over his arm, a revolver fell from the pocket and clattered to the floor. He looked in the breast pocket and found four bullets. Keep Dunway real warm.

He walked back into the kitchen pleased with his find. He watched Starr empty the pantry. Fritos. Oreos. Cheerios. Canned cheese, potted meat, pickled pig’s feet. Vera Mae’s favorites.

"See what I found," he said happily, waving the gun in the air.

Starr yelped and dropped to the floor of the pantry.

"It’s not loaded." Chapman checked the chamber. "Here are the bullets." He held them out in the palm of his hand, sorry he scared her. "How’s school?" he asked feebly trying to talk to her the way he had when she was a little girl.

"It’s summer," she said, standing up. "And that’s Bill’s gun."

"It’s mine now, right, Fat Chap."

Chapman nodded. "And this, too." He handed Dunway the gun and the vest.

"Thanks, buddy." Dunway slipped into the vest and placed the gun and bullets in the pocket.

Buddy. Buddy Boy. Dunway wasn’t his Buddy. Papa Sugar was his only Buddy. Papa Sugar. Mama Shug. "Mama Shug been here? She looking for me?" Chapman whined, walking back into the living room. "Mama Shhuuuuggg," he roared.

"He gets crazy when he starts that," Starr said. "When I was a little girl, he used to make me give my Mama sugar. That meant hit her while he sat on top of her. If I didn’t hit her, then he hit me. Don’t let him hit me," she pleaded. She practiced her Mama’s dirty look. She closed her eyes halfway, her pale eyelashes partially screening Dunway from her vision. Then she pushed out her bottom lip, imitating the ugly sex face her mother used in bars when she wanted to attract some man’s attention.

Starr thought Dunway looked a little like Clint Eastwood who she had seen last year at Fiesta when she and her Mama went to the park to watch the burning of Zozobra, Old Man Gloom. Once the giant papier mâché monster burned to ash, he was supposed to bring good luck. Starr had watched intently as the huge figure burned and crashed to the ground. She could always use a little luck. But her Mama paid no attention. She scanned the crowd for the famous artists and celebrities who came to Santa Fe. Starr didn’t know why they came. From what she’d seen on TV Hollywood looked like a better place. When her Mama found Clint Eastwood, she pointed him out to Starr.

Dunway was younger and he was kind of ugly and kind of handsome, too, in a mean-looking sort of way. He had little pig eyes. Mama always told her that the eyes were the mirror of the soul and to never go out with a man with pig eyes. Bill had red eyes because he was always high. Chapman had big, round, sweet-looking eyes, but he was crazy. She was glad her mother wasn’t home. She probably wouldn’t even notice Dunway’s pig eyes.

Chapman returned from the living room and looked at Starr as if he had never seen her before. "Going to get your dick wet?" Chapman whispered in Dunway’s ear. She was too young for Dunway to be messing with. That little boy he had taken for a ride in Virginia was even younger.

Dunway shoved Chapman. "Get it together," he said, wondering what had made Chapman snap.

"Get it together," Chapman repeated. "We’re going together."

"That’s right," Dunway said. "Where are the keys?"

"Probably in the Tornado. Mama usually leaves them in the glove box."

"Smart woman," Dunway snorted. "Where does she usually keep her money?"

"In the night table by her bed." Maybe if she was nice, Dunway would take her along. She was all alone and didn’t have anything to do anyway. So what if they had broken out of jail. Lots of people who should be in jail weren’t. She heard Bill say that all the time. She even heard people say that President Nixon ought to be in jail. So what if Dunway and Chapman had escaped. Chappy was crazy, but he couldn’t help that. He was kind of like that retarded boy at school. Her teacher told her not to tease him because he couldn’t help himself. Well, neither could Chappy. She handed Chapman one of the Oreos she’d stuffed into the pocket of her cutoffs.

"Thanks, Starr," Chapman remembering who she was. "How’s school?"

"Terrific," Starr said, exasperated. The fat retard still didn’t know it was summer. "I’m the smartest girl in the class; the prettiest, too," she laughed.

Dunway chuckled as he shoved Starr into a kitchen chair and quickly tied her wrists and ankles to it with the laundry line he found on top of the refrigerator.

"Hey," Starr yelled at him, "you don’t have to tie me up. I won’t do nothing. I don’t have nobody to tell," she whined, wriggling as Dunway secured her to the chair. "Come on, Chappy," she pleaded, "untie me. Let me go with you." She began to cry. "You know Mama. She won’t care. I could cook and stuff," she said. She remembered a movie she had seen where the hostage girl ended up falling in love with the guy who had kidnapped her. Once they were on the road, she and Dunway could get rid of Chapman. Then it would just be the two of them. Just like in the movies. "I know lots of places in the mountains." Starr choked as Dunway shoved a sour dishtowel into her mouth on his way out of the kitchen.

Dunway slithered into the first room off the hall. It was a woman’s room all right. He could smell it. Old sex and dirty bed sheets. He picked a pair of VeraMae’s undies off the floor and stuck his face into the crusty crotch. Dirty. He sniffed again and wrapped the soiled silky panties around his dick. Dirty fucking mothers. Stinking twat-faced women. He jerked off quickly and wadded the damp panties into a ball. He threw them onto the floor. That was as close as he needed to get to pussy for a while.

He found two tens and a five in the night stand and stuffed them into the breast pocket of the vest. He hurried back to the kitchen.

"Goddamn it you pervert," he hissed when he saw Chapman standing in front of Starr, his pants around his ankles, his limp penis hanging between his fat legs. He’d pulled Starr’s cutoffs and tattered underwear around her knees. "Well, she has the day right anyway," he laughed. "It is Thursday." The faded letters printed across Starr’s underwear were barely legible. A loop of elastic hung below her knees. "Come on, fat man. Fix yourself up."

Chapman moved away from Starr. He hadn’t really wanted to put it in her. He looked at Starr’s sweet pocket that was only here and there covered with a soft blond fuzz. He’d only wanted to touch it, put his face into it, smell the sweet scent. He hadn’t wanted to hurt her. Sometimes he wanted to hurt people. But not Starr. He’d really just wanted to see it. He’d forgotten what slits looked like.

Starr tried to scream as Dunway came toward her, but the towel in her mouth kept the noise in her throat. She tried to scoot away, but the chair anchored her in place.

"Hold on, sweet pea," he said, checking the knots in the laundry line, making sure she was tied securely. "I ain’t going to hurt you. Don’t want to even touch you!" he yelled, grabbing a few wispy pubic hairs and yanking them out. When Starr began to quiver she looked just like those rabbits he used to mow down when he was a boy.

Out on the farm roads all alone at night, his stun light attached to the top of the pickup, he’d drive up on a bunch of jackrabbits. So dumb. They’d stand at the edge of the road. Looking. Watching. A little hop forward. Trying to figure out if they were going to cross the road. Just as they stuck their little pink noses out over the road’s edge WHAM he’d hit them with the light. Stunned, blinded, they froze and he’d step on the gas, roaring over them in the pickup. Splat them from here to kingdom come. He remembered the dull thud of their fat bodies as they hopped around beneath the pickup. If he hit them just right, sometimes they’d even fly up onto the windshield. Even as they were dying, their quick little feet thumped away. Running. Going nowhere but to the place he longed to be. Dead.

"Got no use for little girls what still got those big ripe cherries," he said. What he really wanted was ram his fist so far up her cunt it would come out her pouty little mouth, break through her ferret-like teeth. But he didn’t because he knew that if he put his hand up there, he’d never get it back. He knew what girls had stuffed up their twats. Blades. Knives. Teeth. They’d gnaw off his fingers, his bones, and spit them back in his face.

"You got the power blood, don’t you, sweet pea? That power blood make you feel like a woman?" He held her jaw and chin in one of his heavily veined hands. He felt the delicate bones of her face and the sharp point of her chin. He figured he could crush her face like a beer can if he wanted.

Starr closed her eyes, afraid to look into the pig eyes of the man who was trying to pull the skin off her face. She had pulled the head off a Junebug at Nellie’s slumber party. It was easy, easy as pulling a grape off its stem. All the girls had screamed and called her gross. Then they locked her out of Nellie’s bedroom and listened to Elton John records. She sat outside the door for a while before she walked home. She thought if Dunway pulled any harder on her face her whole head was going to pop off, just like that Junebug’s.

"Think you have power?" Dunway demanded angrily, twisting her chin up even higher.

"Uhhhh," she grunted through the stinking rag in her mouth. She couldn’t swallow. She began to choke. Yellow spots and blue streaks were all she could see in the sudden darkness. Dunway wrenched her neck roughly and slammed her head to the floor. Her skull made a dull, thudding sound. She began to cry.

"Like the little calves at the prison rodeo," Chapman wistfully. He stared for a moment at Starr who was lying on her side with her ankles and wrists tied behind her. He moved toward her to pull up her panties so she wouldn’t be embarrassed, but Dunway yanked him sharply by the arm and jerked him out the kitchen door, through the living room and outside to the car.

When she opened her eyes, she could just barely see past the refrigerator, out the screen door, into the Romero’s back yard. Maybe Mrs. Romero would come check on her. She did sometimes if she noticed that VeraMae had been gone for a while. Starr’s tears formed dirty puddles on the kitchen floor. She was glad they hadn’t taken her with them. She was sorry she had given them the food and told them where the money was. Sorry she had been so lonely that she was stupid. She didn’t care if she died on the filthy kitchen floor. She’d rather be her dead lonely self than crazy and alive like Dunway and Chapman.

The storm was finally coming in. She could hear it in the wind. It had been cold all day, but she had worn her cutoffs anyway because they were sort of clean. Now she was really cold. Starr watched Mr. Romero’s work pants dance as they dangled from the clothesline and snapped cheerfully in the wind. She prayed that Mrs. Romero would come check on her before the dishrag soaked up all her breath and left her stinking dead on the floor.

***************

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