Generations in Agony...Texas: Chapter Eight

8) When Doyle’s man woke up…

He found himself in the middle of nowhere, with no idea how he had come to such a place. Turning around and around, everything looked exactly the same: a sandy, brush-strewn hell, perfectly flat, and it stretched away into forever.

Looking at his feet, he wondered where his expensive Italian shoes had gone, along with his socks. He hated going bare-footed, generally only doing so in a pool or the shower. He even wore socks to sleep in. And, worse, the sand was hot; after a few seconds of standing there, he began to hop from foot to foot.

Most troublesome of all, he could not get his head to remember what had happened. There was a clear memory of driving into the small town, a flat tire…no, wait, it was two flats! Some guy gave him a ride…

He could not remember any more.

God it’s so fucking hot!

Plopping down onto the sand, he bent over and rubbed his burning feet and tried to take stock of his situation: Middle of nowhere, no shoes… He checked himself more thoroughly. No belt, no tie, no wallet, no fucking gun! “I been robbed!”

A ticking sound got his attention. Looking over his shoulder, he saw the rattler sitting there, as if it had stopped because he had been in its way. “Oh shit!”

He scrambled back to his feet. The sand, once more scorched his tender white soles, but the snake, now rattling like mad as it coiled and pointed its blunt snout at him, held sway over the temperature of the earth.

Doyle’s man stumbled back. He fell over a thicket of Chaparral. The heavy thorns stabbed into his legs and raked his back. While he struggled to right himself, he shredded the fine wool slacks he wore.

Another harsh blast of rattle stopped him cold. He looked to his right. There, not two feet away, another rattler coiled and warned him. “Holy Mary, mother of god…”

Rolling blindly to his left, he did not see the small drop-off gully before he dropped into it abruptly. Also, he did not see the other seven snakes that were shading there, minding their own business before he intruded upon them. A chorus of rattling pushed the hit man’s mind to the snapping point.

He hated snakes. The idea of a snake gave him jelly-legs. Just seeing one on TV filled him with terror; the real thing, not to mention several at once, was too much. He screamed and flailed about, trying to get himself out of the small gully. To top off his palpable dread, several of the hissing, rattling vipers struck him at almost the same moment. He felt each bite, a horrible burning jolt that only added to his extremis. With his heart rate well above 120, the panic that drove him to hysterics only served to move the venom faster.

As he climbed back over the edge of the gully, Doyle’s man felt his bowels release and his bladder let go. He whimpered and moaned as he crawled away from the edge. There were snakes everywhere now, stirred up by the excitement of a human stumbling in amongst them.

Crying, screaming a slobbery prayer to the holy mother, Doyle’s man finally sat up to a wobbly position. His eyes were already so swollen that he could no longer see the horrible landscape around him.

Absurdly, understanding that he was about to die alone and afraid in so strange a place, he could only think of the whore he had been with just before he left Chicago. He tried to think of his poor Irish-born mother, but could not remember her face.

*

One hundred feet away from where Doyle’s man sat dying, Solo watched with little concern. He new the snakes would do their job, for which he was grateful. No part of him attempted to tell himself that this was not murder; but this way he could look anyone in the face and say, honestly, that he did not kill the guy; the idiot had died of snake bite.

This sort of thing happened out here. Everyone knew a story or two about some poor fool who had got himself bit and lost the battle. They would eventually find this guy, maybe not until he was bones, but eventually he would be stumbled over.

Solo stood up and started clearing his tracks with a mesquite limb; a trick his father had taught him a long time ago. It was good, he thought, that the old ways still worked.

*