The horse under him was about to die and he kicked into its ribs and he screamed at it and he didn't care. Run you fuck, fucking run, fucking run. Noon coming. Chasing his shadow, chasing it as it evaporated beneath him. Noon coming god fuck it, fucking run. Fucking get it back to him. She bounced on the saddle behind him, thrown across it, trussed up and not making a sound. He felt her smiling at his fear and he didn't have time to beat her to shut her up, to show her he was still in control.
Noon coming. Run.
---
The store brought the town to life and became its heart in the way the motel probably had been until the desert started to swallow it.
Everybody wanted to rent something, so everybody needed to work. The nights became a fast blur of purchases, lines, complaints, disputes, resolutions. Do you have the Farscape movie? I can't find October Sky. Can I put these here if I don't want them? Keep the penny. I won't pay it. Can't you make an exception?
On and on that way.
The other thing was the boy, the clerk thought. The boy came back and helped, and eventually the clerk showed him how to clock in and how to read off the titles of the movies and put them back on the shelf properly. The boy even knew how to use the computers and take money to ring people through by the time he'd been doing it for four or five nights. His smaller hands flying nimbly over the keys, having so much fun. The whole thing for him still a game. A novelty for which he took payment only because it was offered.
Afterward they closed the store, the boy staying and chattering and not caring that the clerk said nothing besides the occasional nod or grunt to indicate he was listening. It would not have mattered to the boy if he hadn't listened.
So went the nights.
In the blistering heat of the days, the clerk slept until a couple hours before the store opened, then wandered. The answer to the uninterrupted stream of power was Unk again. Unk had rigged a series of waterwheels beneath the ground along the route of the rushing water issuing from the aquifer. Sun and water powered the entirety of that speck of dust in the nowhere, and it was at once simple and at the same time elegant.
He knew it was Unk because when he found the waterwheels hidden below ground, there was another note. Turn off the lights when they come from the west. Tell no one where the power comes from – Unk
The days passed like trash tumbling over the open plains. Taking longer than they ought. All lore of the stars overhead that might help him set date and time lost to him. Nobody in that fitfully slumbering world realizing there might be some significance to them, and he without the patience to enlighten them.
---
They came out of the east, so he left the lights on and the machinery running. He'd just opened – the boy sat in one of the branches of one of the trees in the courtyard. From above he could see them coming and called down to the clerk. The clerk stood in the middle of the street watching. The guns belted to his hips. The sun sticking to his brow and his thighs and the backs of his shoulders as he waited. When he knew their number he went back inside.
The boy, sensing something, skittered down the branch to the ground, running after the clerk as he ducked back into the store.
Are they more of you?
No.
What are they?
Customers. Run along home.
But...
Before they get here. Okay?
Okay.
Okay.
---
Like a freight train through a city that must blast the horn at every sidewalk, they came. He heard them shouting and laughing. The snickers of jackals, shiny teeth and cat's eyes glinting in the dark on the edge of a campsite. The ringer on the door sounded, their ingress drowning it out.
Three of them. The apparent leader maybe thirty – too much blond hair spilling out of a backward baseball cap every which way, a long coat on over shorts and no shirt. The other two might have been his brothers. All of them blinged out. Rings and wristwatches and necklaces – none of them fit, all of them stolen from the newly dead.
Yaaaaaaaeah! Fuckin' movies, yaheah! Thought this place was shot on up!
Man, fuck this place.
Don't be fuckin' this place I want some goddamn FILMS bitches, don't be up in here like that.
Well last time we...
SHUT IT, BITCHES!
One of them had the girl in tow. They'd handcuffed her, the one referred to as bitches had one hand on the chain linking the cuffs and dragged her along that way. Her hands behind her back, struggling to walk backward to keep up, struggling and falling to her knees, only to be dragged up again. Her face stony and downcast. No struggle. She was another child of a world beyond the point of fighting back. Another life not worth prolonging.
In keeping with the absurdity of such things, she was beautiful, the clerk thought. A unique type of beautiful. He was out back taking out the trash and it was a gorgeous day outside and he did not want to go inside where he would need to sort more videos. There was the park back behind the store. Fifty feet away, with its own little lake. A mallard with its dignified green head, his grey, blue-striped wife at his side, leading an obedient line of their children in a curving, gliding path across the water as if it were glass. He heard the bike come to a stop beside him.
You need to escape.
He looked over. It was her, clad in shorts that went down only to her mid-thigh, a tank-top stained with sweat, some of her stomach peeking out where the top failed to meet the shorts. Brown hair messy and cut boyishly short. Making him want more than anything in the world not to be at work.
So sweep me off my feet and take me away.
She laughed.
You listenin'? Wanna rent it, JACK.
He looked at the apparent leader, then back down to the movie. The Best of America's Funniest Home Videos. His left index finger rested at his side and gently tapped the grip on his gun before he looked up at him again and spoke calmly.
Do you have an account?
Their leader sneered and laughed it off. Man, you know I get free rentals, Jack, man, you don't remember me from the meetin'?
I reckon I missed the last meeting.
Well Jack, you missed out on beers and bitches then.
I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about.
Come on now Jack, I prove it to you, I show you. See here? He opened the coat on one side – pinned to his shirt in an utterly random place was a name tag that was the brother of the clerk's own.
U N K
The clerk blinked.
Don't recall anybody named that. I reckon I'm still gonna need to see a card if you want to rent anything.
The customer thought he moved quickly, but he was just a fool. Waste of motion. Telegraphing his movements. Playing up the drama. The gun in the clerk's face, drawn from the belt near the small of his back. A little spitter of a machine pistol.
Motherfucker, I reckon THIS is my account!
The clerk didn't take his eyes off of the customer's.
If that's how it's gotta be. Is that how it's gotta be?
The customer looking unsure, not knowing he was. A little tremor to the end of the barrel. The customer gripping it just a little too hard. Finger on the trigger like an amateur, and the clerk didn't care how dangerous it all was.
I say the way it be, Jack, so it be my way.
I reckon so. Step through.
He put in an employee number, scanned it with the laser gun, rang it through as an employee free rental. Ironically, he was using Unk's account. He set it on the other counter past the scanners, the other customers laughing at him and pulling along the woman. She looked at the clerk. No desperation in her gaze, no entreaty. Nothing in her soul.
The customers' spokesman took the video. The clerk pointed at him, and he stopped.
You've got three days. By noon. You understand?
The customer started to laugh, but the clerk cut him off.
I asked you if you understood.
The customers had not bothered to take much notice of the guns at his hips until then. They either didn't view him as a threat or simply hadn't seen them behind the counter. In the cross-gap between the sensors and the door and the store and the outside, they could certainly see them now.
I get you Jack man, ain't no need to be...
Have a nice afternoon, gentlemen.
They hurried out, the woman in tow.
The clerk watched them at the window as they dragged her through the stand of trees past the newly-flowing fountain in the little courtyard, then to their horses. They only started jeering at her again when they thought they were out of earshot.
I think we can stretch it out some more tonight, honey, you like that? You were lovin' it...
The horse seized on the cue.
Are you suffering from minuteman syndrome? You need Spartan Brand Condoms, for when you need to last all night long at the Hot Gates. Now available in The District!
SHUT THE FUCK UP HORSE GIDDYTHEGODDAMN FUCK UP!
The clerk allowed himself the thinnest of smiles. They'd not even stopped for food or drink. Had it been anybody else behind the counter, they might have. Even if they were being assholes about it, they were running. Get them running. That's the first thing.
Damned if you can aim while you're running.
---
The boy Henry came back after he was sure they were gone. Kayla came running from the motel to see if he was all right as well. She came by once every couple of days to rent romantic comedies and stare at him until it was apparent he wouldn't reciprocate. She smiled and jumped up and down when she saw him whole.
He'd walked out from the courtyard into the sun and heat, watching them. They'd headed west, around the motel and off into the bleak flat eternity beyond the town. In about three hours' ride they would crest a hill and dip below it and be out of sight. This wasn't a visit then, but a pit stop along the way to somewhere else they'd established before.
Or, he reflected, they could be direction-less retards.
The boy Henry could approach him, though Kayla did not feel she needed to – the girl strutting happily away from him, and with an oozing smile looking back every few feet.
Anything happen?
He looked down at the boy. Such concern, such worship. He wanted none of it. Couldn't bear to just tell the kid to leave. No, nothing happened.
But something is going to. Not a question.
Yes. He jerked his head toward the store. Can you keep an eye on the place for a couple days? He stifled the feeling of pride at the way the boy's eyes lit up with the request.
Sure! No problem!
You don't let anybody off on late fees.
I won't.
No handing out employee rentals to Kayla, no matter if she makes eyes at you like I see she does.
I won't.
You can have a can of soda if there's nothing going on and all the check-ins are sorted.
Okay.
And don't skimp on the vacuuming. I can tell when you do. Okay?
Okay.
Okay. Should be back on the third day, morning. Okay?
Okay.
Okay. One last thing.
What?
The clock's a little off. Put it ahead five minutes.
The horse behind the motel looked to have been idling for a while, but the gauge on the neck read half full. It would do. He untied it from the NO PARKING sign that somebody had used as its post, and mounted up.
Hey pardner, before we go, I just wanna tell ya 'bout a new movie comin' on down the road. He stunned you in Batman Begins. He gave you hope in Cinderella Man. Now, they've got a TRAIN TO CATCH. 3:10 to Yuma, coming to a theater near you in The District!
He pulled the neck panel down to inspect what was inside. It was an older model after all. The vox unit easily identifiable. He pulled the right-hand gun this time.
Inside the motel, Kayla sat on his bed and looked at the desk. The toy horse was gone – he'd taken it with him. Her ears winced at the single pop. The sound of the horse's vox shattering into sizzling, burning pieces.
Boots striking the side of the creature. The passing beats of the hooves. Little fiber-glass chunks and their glimmering ringing as they rained to the ground from the horse's destroyed throat. The silence following. She laid down on his spot on the bed, curled up into a little ball, and napped in the passing heat of the day.
---
The customer and his band traveled hot by day and crested the hill at a full gallop. The horses were not like their natural precursors – able to stomp forward eternally so long as they had some manner of food or drink. The girl did not make a sound as she bumped along the back of the saddle. Her long dress fluttering in the wind of their passage like the hanging leaves of a willow. They did not look back. They'd become bored with her by midday. Forgotten about her by evening.
Had they not forgotten about her, they'd have killed her. As it was she lay across the rump of the horse for the night, thankful in her silence that they had the movie and the little portable TV that hooked into the outlet in the horse's side.
Between the light of the campfire, the noise of their drinking and shouting at small children being footballed in the crotch and elderly women being attacked by their own cats, they did not notice him as he approached.
When their fire died down, the customer with Unk's name tag looked out to the east from whence they'd come. A single campfire burning high in the flat dark, casting shadows of the skeletal sagebrush like the flickering hands of a watch. The customer squinted into the bright center of the camp, perhaps a mile away. A single form moved. The silhouette of a man across the fire, his shadow a giant waving before him. Perfectly still. Watching.
The stranger's fire died, and the customer could see no more. He eased the machine pistol out of its spot in his belt and cradled it in his hands, breathing hard, not daring to light his own fire again. Eyes darting about in the darkness, fighting to adjust to the inky black. Every skittering coyote a phantom wearing a blue-and-gold polo shirt.
Sleep didn't come.
---
When the other two woke up, he told them to shut the fuck up bitches, can't you fucking hear his ass, didn't you fucking see? To which came the response of many a man-fuck-you and eat-a-dick, and it was the focus of such an argument that they forgot about breakfast and forgot about the combo TV/VCR until bitches got so incensed that he put his foot through it.
Cursing. Blood. I paid for that fucking shit, you motherfucker. Man, fuck you. You makin' motherfuckin' noise and his ass is out there. Man, YOU ass is out there, you talkin' some shit. I SAW his ass, you goin' over there with me or not? Over to fuckin' what, what you two bitches talkin' about? Over to THAT buttfucker, his ass is OUT there, right the fuck there... what the fuck?
Ain't nothin' there. Well there was some shit there! Your ass is crazy. FUCK YOU YOU CALL ME CRAZY HE WAS THERE GOD DAMN IT HE SAW I SAW HIM AND HIS ASS LIKE SNUCK OFF OR SOME SHIT. Man, don't go pointin' that air soft shit at my face like that, man, who you foolin'?
On and on, until the one known as bitches punched the customer in the stomach. A good, hard one, aimed at a point just past the base of the spine. The customer fell to the ground, dust kicking up onto his shirt, covering the hallowed namesake of Unk. He that was bitches pushed the girl off the rump and onto the ground without the slightest thought for her safety. She flopped to the dust without a sound. He mounted up and said a final fuck you, then rode off eastward.
The shouts of the customer after him drowned out by the horse. Had rough times with your friends? Try a peace offering. Grab a six-pack of Sandstone Lager – it's the Bro-Maker! Only available in the District. Surgeon General's warning: Product contains alcohol.
The other one had taken a seat on a stone and waited for the fight to be over, not saying anything. He was always slow to take sides.
The one called bitches made it to the rise some hours later. The sun past its peak, but far from the hazy descent to its resting place. His shadow lengthening before him, falling upon the clerk standing next to his own creature, his jacket and hat hung rather rudely over the horse's face.
Howdy, friend-o. The voice anything but genial.
Bitches came to a total stop, freezing. The clerk had guns at his hips. Bitches had a shotgun hung at the horse's rump and a pistol in his belt, but his coat was in the way. His horse stumbled left and right, trying to find some acceptable path around the clerk, but waiting for a cue from its rider.
Whatchu want, motherfucker?
I have never in this or any other lifetime, to my knowledge, had sexual relations with a woman who has borne children.
What the fuck you sayin'?
Do you have the girl?
Man, who the...
If the next word that exits your mouth is not a yes or a no, it will be the last word. Is the girl with you? Yes or no.
The customer stopped cold. It was too late. It was too late – he couldn't draw. The clerk could draw, he could draw and shoot. He knew it. He was dead. He had to do something... had to try to run or run the clerk over or just get the hell out of there.
If you're waiting for me to ask it again...
No.
Is the video with you?
No.
That's too bad. Looks like you're just a chalkboard.
Whazza chalkboard?
What did I just say about yes or no?
---
The boy Henry sat up in the tree waiting for a customer to wander into the store. There was nobody inside and the rush would not start for another hour or so.
A staccato crack-crack-crack-crack from across the wastes. He couldn't see far enough. Two dots... three?... in the hazy sundown. Kayla below him on the ground, knocking on the tree.
I bet you'll give me a free one, Henry!
I told him I wouldn't and I won't.
I'll bet you'll give me a free one if I let you feel it!
That only works once. Get on outta here!
She threw a small stone up at him playfully and ran off, he reciprocating with a curse for which his mother walked all the way from their house to scold him.
---
The customer with Unk's name tag paced the campsite back and forth in the lowering dusk. His partner had not moved from the rock. It was about time to start in to putting down the wood for another fire, gathering some of the sage to use for kindling, that sort of thing. All chores forgotten in his hammering fear. Sonbitch is OUT there. I know man, easy. You want me to be easy, you fuckin' shoulda seen his ass, like the devil and... what the fuck? Bitches? Man I knew that bitchass be ridin' on back and...
The horse clopped into camp at a showy canter, as if in a parade – ordered to do so by whomever had last set its course. Sitting low in the saddle, slumped forward, was the bloodied form of bitches. Skin pale. Eyes comically out of focus. The round hole in the cheekbone that drilled all the way out the back of the skull, taking chunks with it. More near the heart and in the stomach.
The horse stopped, dislodging the body. Falling to the ground with a final flat thud. A playing card, the deuce of diamonds, stuck in one of his boots.
The customer picked it up. Writing on the blank back side of the card.
Tomorrow. Noon. – Unk
The horse spoke.
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The woman, silent for days, started to laugh.
The advert repeated over and over.
---
It had freaked the other one out, and the customer was the last left of his posse. She bumped against the saddle behind him. Fucking bitch laughing at me. No amount of thrashing. No amount of it. Fucking I'll cut your lips see if you can smile you bitch, but first him. First him. Fucking noon. God fuck on it, run you piece of shit...
The outlying houses of the town sailed by. He skidded to a stop in front of the courtyard, leaping from the saddle. The clerk stood in front of the store's exit door, leaning calmly up against the glass of it. Arms folded. Guns at his sides. Not waiting so much as happening to be there. His brow dry as sand.
The customer ran up, ran past the fountain, came to a stop and hurling the VHS at his feet. It clattered across the ground, the case popping open slightly, sliding to a rest as it clunked the clerk's boot. MOTHERFUCKING THERE! NOON MOTHERFUCKER, THERE RIGHT THERE!
The clerk looked down at the VHS. He consulted his watch. He looked into the store. Looked up at the sun, glaring straight down. The fountain the only sound in the fading echo of the customer's frenzied shout. The man's breath shrieking, his shoulders heaving up and down, sweat obscuring his vision, dripping unrestrained down his face and neck.
I reckon its five past.
The customer nearly collapsed, a slight moan escaping his throat. Ohhhh, oh, fuck it man, it ain't even...
We've gotta talk late fees. Can't just have you renting something and not bringing it back.
Awww... aw no... here... what is it man, I'll pay it, aight, I'll pay...
It's not that simple. If it were your account it would be, but you were being unreasonable.
I'll be reasonable man, I'll be reasonable. Please, Christ, I'll...
You had to have it free. Had to argue and be belligerent. That's how it gotta be, you said.
What do you want? You can have the girl, I didn't mean to hurt her, I swear man, you can have her...
I even let you have it. When I shouldn't have, either. Let you have an employee rental. We only get five of those a week. I let you have one. If a district manager ever found out about that I'd be fired, but I let you have it.
Take her. Fuckin' take her man. Grabbing the girl by the cuffs. Dragging her down, throwing her across the gap between the two of them, the clerk ignoring her.
Pushing her gently aside with one hand, his eyes never leaving the customer.
It isn't. About. The girl.
Man, I... I get it, I get it. Not the girl... okay. Look man, I'm sorry I bummed off your account man, I swear that I'll...
I never said you bummed off my account. That's why this isn't simple.
Who? Who, I'll pay 'im, I'll...
That was Unk's account.
Unk? Who the fuck is Unk?
I don't know. I never will. But I think I would've liked him.
A dawning horror on the customer's face. His hand darting to the shirt, ripping the name tag off, gazing in horror at the name upon it.
Son of a bitch never even read it. Maybe can barely remember how to read. You deserved better.
The customer hurled it at the clerk's feet to join the video.
I didn't do it, I swear to god I didn't I swear to god oh god, please don't please... I'll never do it again I'll...
You repent?
Sobs. W-whuh?
Say you're sorry, you damn toolbag!
I'm sorry...
Good. It's easier on my conscience if you don't go to hell when I kill you.
The guns left their leather and they did not stop until they were empty. In the confinement of the courtyard the roar deafened. The body, life robbed from it, jerked in the final explosions, the lead shredding through it. Gore soaking the face of the fountain as the body plunged into the water. Red inking down to the bottom in expanding ropes, diluted by the purity.
Ablution for the recently confessed.
He reloaded in a split second, sliding the guns back home and then reached down for Unk's name tag, ignoring the video. Held it in his hand, palming it. Not praying. He looked up to see the people peeking around the corners. They fled at his gaze. He turned back to the store and went inside, the boy Henry behind the counter, not fearful in the least. Damn it, stop being proud of that boy.
You can run along home. We're not getting anybody tonight, I don't think.
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