A fly buzzed near his face. The sound of it loud and annoying as the sun with its mid-morning heat pressuring him to get out of bed. There was probably no one else in the house but at 14 Ethan was already a veteran of the hangover. He knew that as soon as he stood up his head would swim in last nights booze. He wiggled himself deeper into the covers, twisted his face into the pillow.
The fly buzzed.
He had a little pot left. A joint and a shower were bound to make him feel better he thought, but never moved. The sun would not relent, and the fly landed on his eyebrow.
FUUUUUUUUUCK!, he thought but made no sound. He kicked the cover down and away from him, propped up on an elbow and looked for his rolling tray.
That is when he heard the sound. A flat, solid thwack of a sound like a school book dropped flat onto the floor beside a desk.
THWACK!, and then an inhuman howl of pain, a scream from some hellish place he did not know. Leaping from the bed and running outside, he saw that his neighbor and oft-time partner in crime, Sean, had cut off the thumb of Andy Miles while trying to kill a chicken, Ethan turned a quarter away from the scene and vomited. Andy had been holding the bird while Sean would for the first time use a hatchet to cut off it's fowl head. Needless to say young Sean had missed. After Ethan had finished retching, the last thing he saw was Sean driving the Miles family car to the emergency room, his single thumbed father in the passenger seat. Clearly the younger Miles proud of another first time experience, driving the car.
Ethan paced back and forth looked at his watch. Looked towards the road, paced again, took his phone out and looked at it. 12 minutes since the call. He wished Boots would hurry, then the white Chevy pick-up truck turned into the lot and stopped just in front of him. Pulling open the passenger door he asked,
"What's she doing here, she can't go, this is a thing."
"Hey Blue" the blonde who sat in the middle of the bench seat of Boots McCormack's truck said so sweet you would never know she had heard him.
"We were gonna go to the new Italian joint later, she thought you might want to go too."
"Get rid of her, this is a thing" , and he slammed the door shut just as Boots peeled away leaving black marks on the pavement. Boots was pissed. When he pulled back up 30 or so minutes later neither Ethan Blue or Boots McCormack mentioned it. They were of another time when men did not discuss feelings or much else. As different as they were, this old fashion way of living bound them together, that and the fact that they had done time.They were different though. Boots a conservative hard working truck driver and Ethan a drug addicted writer who made the bulk of his living in shady deals with evil men who supplied the thing that kept him an outlaw no matter how hard he tried to move past that part of his life. After a moment Boots said,
" I am not going on a drug run."
" And I am not asking", he turned and looked Boots in the eye, "this is serious."
Nothing else was said about it. Blue gave him directions and told him what to do and that was that.
Walking the last quarter of a mile or so to the cabin where the Mexican lived, Ethan Blue thought about many things. His wives, his kids, the people that he had disappointed, and the fact that Boots McCormack was so very removed from this sort of thing. Even though they had met in jail it had been the first and last trip for Boots. He was a good man. The only one that Ethan Blue could count on. Each step took him closer to his destiny, he knew it was about the little girl that the Mexican had seen that night in front of the Salvation Army where he had dropped off a package to Blue. The girl that he had wanted and ordered Ethan to get for him. The teen that knew life too soon and the one that Ethan had given money and a ticket for a Greyhound in order for her to have one last chance.
Walking up the dirt driveway Ethan was struck by the similarities that this place had with his childhood home. The smell of smoke and pine, the old clothesline and the john boat on a rusted tube frame trailer, even the pile of wood standing by waiting to be split with hammer and maul. The way the birds would sing normally. They were quiet now.
The Mexican stepped out around the corner in the back,
"Que tal, my friend, come come lets have a Modelo's huh?"
Ethan followed him to the back porch and sat, the other man handed him a cool beer from a sort of pouch. between them a chunk of wood that hadn't been split sat like a sort of table. A hatchet stuck down in its surface stained a wicked black. The two of them sat in quiet if not peace and drank the beers, in no hurry to finish. After a time, Oscar Barron known only to most as The Mexican looked over and asked Blue,
" What is friendship? What does it mean? Are we friends Ethan Blue, we have an arrangement yes, but more I think. I think we are friends. When the chongo's came at me in la penitentiary, you stood by me - you spilled blood yes? that I might live. You can imagine then my disappointment when I hear the chica will not be mine, yes? When I hear that it is my friend who has sent her away, to protect her from me. You think you are Pancho Villa yes? You think you are Jesus. You are Don Quixote wasting your time and mine. I am so bad? I would not take care of this chica, I do not offer her a better life?
It was true Ethan thought, she would not want for meals. She would have nice things, at least for a while. She would never stand shivering in the streets shifting from one foot to the other waiting for hungry men who would pay for her attention. Who was he really to pass judgement on men? He had never been an angel himself. In the end though he knew he had done the right thing.
"I am your friend cabrone, we have always worked well together."
" And yet what of loyalty, amigo, what of these things that make me sleep well at night knowing you only wish good things for me?"
"What of it?" , Ethan asked.
" Do you know the Samurai, Ethan, the Japanese Samurai warriors were the ultimate when it came to loyalty. Did you know that Samurai means "to serve" in their language? I am involved with certain men Ethan, some of them direct descendants of the Samurai, making them Samurai themselves. These friends of mine, they have an excellent means of proving oneself loyal, yes, do you know what I mean Ethan?
Ethan looked at the hatchet and then back at The Mexican. Then back at the hatchet again. The Mexican let out a huge belly laugh, then looked over at Ethan,
"Yes you are a clever one, Ethan Blue, I never have to spell it out for you, , before even me
Usted entiende primera sometimes I think. It is a simple thing really, my friend, and after all- 9 are as good as 10, mas y minos." And he laughed some more, a deep and menacing laugh, when Ethan leaned forward to grasp the hatched his laughter stopped abruptly and his hand was suddenly filled with a large caliber hand gun,
"Just in case you need inspiration."
Ethan looked into his eyes, afraid maybe for the first time in his life. This was not going to end any way good. He leaned and snatched up the hatchet, and his host jerked back in spite of the pistol, but Ethan didn't make any threatening gestures. Instead he smiled at the Mexican,
"This then, and then we are friends again, amigo?"
"Si, this then my friend and a promise that you will never again interfere and then we are amigos, my friend."
Ethan slapped his left hand down hard and fast onto the rough oak table that sat between them. He took three maybe four quick deep breathes and he raised the hatchet high in one swift motion. He lowered it to his left thumb slow and with purpose. Lining up the cut , practicing the motion. He lifted the hand ax slowly this time, this time it was all or nothing. Sweat droplets formed on his lip and forehead, a sheen on the back of his left hand, his neck. He looked up one last time at Oscar Barron, a man whose life he had once saved.
THWACK!, the sound was like a bag of wet cement hitting the sidewalk. He was dizzy, and disoriented a little. The hatchet dropped to the ground.
Oscar Barron leaned back in the patio chair a grim expression giving little away. The hole where his eye used to be seeped smoke upwards, and blood down. Boots McCormack crossed the back yard in a near run, a 30.06 hunting rifle with scope in his hands. He did not look well, he had never killed before.
"It was serious, I had no choice." he said to Blue, a man who had once saved his life as well.
"It was serious, Boots, we had no choice" he said to the only man he would ever trust with his life.
