Crimes in Southern Indiana Read online

  Opening the cage for Spade, Iris’s arms were bruised and stiff, joints quartered by sharp blades of pain from attaching the heavy-gauge chain to the hounds, setting traps, and catching coyotes. He leashed the bluetick hound, led him out of the barn.

  Iris had been a master in the realm of breeding, raising, and training a hound for hunting coon. He had retired from being a town street supervisor, keeping the sidewalks clean. Signs changed. His wife had passed from diabetes, taking one limb and then the next until she was no longer human. Aft er burying her, he fell into a dark well of existence. Wanted a new challenge. Heard men at the Leavenworth Tavern speaking in hushed tones about fighting dogs, the battling and the rush that it delivered.

  Iris forfeited everything he once knew. Got pulled in by the addiction of battle, blood, and the exchange of cash.

  Stopping in front of the twenty-by-twenty practice pit, the soil turned up fine and blotted by other animals passing from this life, he bent down, hefted the hound, stepped over the thick lumbered walls colored by past kills. Training, Chancellor called it.

  From a distance, he heard the cigar-voiced greeting of Chancellor. “Mornin’, Mr. Iris. How goes?”

  Iris ignored him. Set Spade on the ground. Was reminded of his own dogs he used for fighting. Iris filled troughs with hot and cold water, training Ruby, Ring, and Checkers to endure shock, something a hunting dog didn’t need. They enjoyed the hunt, knowing they’d be rewarded by the dead coon and the aff ection it brought from the owner afterward, not maimed trying to win or because they lost a fight. But just like training his hounds for hunting, the fighters got walked in the morning, taken swimming in streams and ponds in the evenings. Iris also used weighted chains, attached them to his fighting dogs’ collars when he removed them from their cages during the waking hours of man to strengthen their necks. Combined vitamins with loin for lean fuel, fed to them in the morning and evening. Coyotes were trapped, restrained with choke poles, led to the practice pit for the hounds to get the taste of battle and a fresh kill. Just like the one whose left hind had been disfigured from the metal teeth. Trapped this morning, now chained to the log post smeared with the graffiti of fur and innards in the pit’s center.

  The coyote’s mangy frame tensed and twitched every time it tried to touch its left hind to the ground, growled and bared its teeth.

  The pat of boots across the dead grass lot grew in pitch and Chancellor said, “You’s ’bout a stubborn ol’ son of a bitch. Least you is still able to see the world flourish with all its color.”

  In one of the pit’s corners, Iris kneeled down, kept Spade from seeing the coyote, and said, “Ain’t nothin’ purty ’bout what I been doin’. And just ’cause we got a deal don’t mean I got to like it.” He felt Spade’s heart vibrating his ribs, flexing his tendon and muscle. Spade could smell the coyote, hear its scratch and whine. Iris removed the collar, held Spade as if this were a real fight. He thought about how none of his friends knew what he’d been doing. Only God knew his wrongs.

  Spade growled, slumped his shoulders. His ears hung like limp tissue at the sides of each jaw. Iris moved beside him. He’d grown fond of the hound over the weeks, as it reminded him of his first hunting dog, Eddie, when he was a boy. Iris whispered in Spade’s ear. “I’s sorry.” As if he understood the old man. Chancellor just shook his head. And Iris released Spade.

  The bluetick mainlined for the coyote. Feinted low. The coyote’s fur finned up across its spine. Tried to back away, stand its ground. The chain around its neck went tight, the left hind gave, the coyote bared its teeth and tried to stand its ground, and Spade went to the neck. Jerked and tugged from side to side while its claws pushed the coyote into the soil. Bawls lit up the air. Birds flew from trees and Chancellor sipped his coffee, swallowed, and said, “Be damned if that don’t get your eyes puckered with glow for the rest of the day.”

  Iris’s stomach clenched and burned as he watched this dismantling of the weak, listening to the yelps that were pleas for help the same as a human injured and defenseless against his or her attacker. He watched Spade work and part the fur of the coyote’s throat until movement was gone. He knew then the difference between the hounds he’d raised and the ones Chancellor raised. Knew how he’d make things right, or as right as he could.

  Eyes burned with the stench of rot. Angel’s words still coursing through Crazy’s head with what he’d been waiting for, telling him last night, “Tomorrow after work, we motor to the river, make a swap.”

  Crazy stood in the chicken factory, tired of waiting to become another number riddled across the land. Using a stainless edge he parted the dead and plucked chickens that hung from the steel shackle line. Crazy had been sneaking around. Texting. Making phone calls. Feeding Mitchell intel about future dope deals running from Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, and even Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Telling about the house out in the country where they cut, weighed, and repackaged the dope for resale. Mitchell had their routes on and off Highway 62. He was waiting to nail the runners and Crazy’s set on the next swap down along the Ohio River—at the old lighthouse. Pull Crazy out and place him in the custody of U.S. marshals, where he’d begin a new life.

  Until then, Crazy kept a standard daylight profile working at the factory. But that profile was eating him up inside. He was tense, his nerves rattled day to day, not wanting to get caught, and Angel still offered questions.

  With a latex-covered hand, Crazy fingered out the bird’s stringy opaque guts, splashed them into the metal trough. The night he’d got caught, made the deal with Mitchell, and put everything to paper while being filmed, he’d made it to the apartment after sunrise. Angel waited up. Wanted to know where he’d been. Crazy told him he’d been out with a female. Angel wanted to know why he didn’t call or text. Crazy told him he’d lost track of time. That it wouldn’t happen again. And Angel told him no, it wouldn’t. Then Angel questioned him about coming up short; the higher-ups had questions.

  The higher-ups were the leaders in the big house, prison. Word had come from the prisons, snaked its way through the states with the other sets who made the swap with Crazy and his set. Seemed their totals were a little off sometimes. Crazy told Angel he didn’t know. Maybe he should question those who trade with them. Angel told him, maybe they should.

  The waiting and not knowing what Angel had running through his head had become worse than knowing.

  As he passed the pimpled fowl down the line, Angel’s words were a repetitive jolt. It was a relief to Crazy that he’d be out soon.

  The first break bell rang. Crazy let Hyena and the other workers file out in front of him. Followed behind in shin-high rubber boots and white overalls stained with the heated insides that hid his inked flesh of La Santa Muerte, Saint Death, gothic angels, clowns, roman numerals, and knife scars.

  Keeping his distance, he watched the others entering the chicken factory’s tiled restroom. Made sure he was alone. Texted Mitchell, telling him, tomorrow.Swap@lighthouse.

  Crazy walked into the restroom, pulled off his rubber gloves, tossed them into the metal trashcan. Took in the streaks of blood that outlined them as they lay piled with the other gloves.

  He stepped to the marble-circled washing station, grabbed a bar of soap, and eyed his boys Shank and Flame. With bristled heads and lean, gnarled frames, they were the first two young men Angel and Crazy had recruited after crossing the Rio Grande, paying the coyotes to bring those two and ten other MS-13 members up to Angel and him in the Midwest. They had jumped them in this very bathroom. Six years ago. And now he’d ratted them all out for his chance at freedom.

  Mashing the metal bar to the floor beneath the rounded washing station, Crazy pushed out a steady flow of water, lathered his hands. Then he rinsed away the stink of his labor, stepped to one of the porcelain dryers that lined a brick wall, elbowed the chrome button that reflected his body, and dried his hands. Caught Shank and Flame nodding to the handful of factory employees to get out. Footsteps and chatte
r exited.

  Hyena guarded the bathroom’s doorway.

  Crazy took a deep breath, clenched his fists. Something was going down.

  Shank and Flame stood in caramel-colored work uniforms, shirts buttoned to the top, with their backs to a scuffed bathroom stall. Flame rattled his knuckles on the stall door. Beneath the door boots dropped from standing on a toilet to the floor. The door swung open. Crazy serpent-eyed Angel, taking in the pitted and scarred facade that highlighted their past. The bold letters MARA across his forehead, bleeding into teardrops down his left jaw. Angel held the duff el bag of cash Crazy had hidden in his truck.

  Angel tossed the bag across the grouted floor at Crazy and tongued a question. “Why you do this, Crazy?”

  Crazy didn’t blink. His insides iced over. “Do what?”

  “Don’t play me for stupid. Know how much cash is in there? More than the higher-ups know about.”

  Crazy ran his hand through the white suit and into his pocket, thumbed the far left button, number one. Mitchell’s number. Shit was about to hit the fan.

  Not wanting to be punked, Crazy said, “Tired of this never knowing. Want a life of ’gevity without worry of when it end.”

  Angel chuckled. “You become wormlike. American bitch.”

  Crazy felt the other’s eyes puncturing his frame from every direction with a zillion ice picks. These guys, his family, they wanted to fillet him, feed him to Chancellor’s dogs, and he said, “No, I am Salvadoran. Want to one day become elder Salvadoran.”

  In El Salvador it was about belonging to survive. Here in the States it was about separation by the language you didn’t speak, clothes you didn’t wear, and cars you couldn’t aff ord. Trafficking drugs gave you all of that until you realized you were a number waiting to be replaced by a new one.

  Angel was granite-hard. “Me, I am primera palabra. You were segunda palabra.” Angel was the first word, Mara, and Crazy had been the second word, Salvatrucha. The first and second in charge of their MS set, the Crazy Blades. Angel told Crazy, “But now you are el ladrón.” The thief. “Filch from the hand that accepted and nourished you. You know how we deal with a thief.”

  Ladrón. They were just here about the money. They didn’t know about his deal. From his pocket came the echo of a tiny voice, “Felix? Felix?” Crazy’s alias.

  Angel glanced at Crazy’s hand in his pocket. Could hear the voice. Watched Crazy pulling the phone from his pocket. Who did this bitch have to call?

  Angel’s face was a rumpled hide as he gritted his teeth and said, “You been green-lit by big homies. You’re dead.”

  Into the phone Crazy shouted, “Chicken plant!” and pivoted to get his back against the wall.

  Shank, Flame, and Hyena swarmed Crazy like sharks to a raw slab of beef. Flame feinted right and double-jabbed a point into Crazy’s right shoulder. Pain ran red. Crazy grunted, dropped the phone, reached and gripped Flame’s ear, pulled him face-to-face, let his teeth taste the cartilage of his nose. Flame screamed like a bitch. Crazy wrestled the blade from Flame’s hand, sliced across Flame’s eyes, halved them into a permanent state of blindness. Flame’s knees dropped onto the floor, with both his hands patting the moisture that poured from his chewed nose and cleaved sight.

  Shank lunged. Crazy twisted and dug the serrated piece of steel he’d pulled from Flame into the meat of Shank’s left hip. Pulled it free. Shank winced, and Crazy swiped his edge across Shank’s elbow flexer. Vein, tendon, and ligaments ruptured. Shank jerked, stepped back into Angel. Dropped his blade to the tile, palmed his wound.

  From behind, Hyena roped a piece of braided cable over Crazy’s head, noosed it tight across his throat. Lifted Crazy to the balls of his feet. Ripe-faced and gagging, Crazy staked his knife into Hyena’s right thigh, over and over, tenderizing the muscle. Hyena released the cable, dropped backwards onto the tiled floor. The knife stuck in the flank of his leg. He chewed on the sting and burn, ripped the knife free.

  Angel came with a jagged blade, divided Crazy’s jaw just below the ink of a double teardrop, and said, “In the hospital.” Crazy staggered backwards, shoulder burning, and fingered the wet from his face. Angel parted Crazy’s chest and said, “In the jailhouse.” Crazy pressed both hands to his chest. Angel’s eyes branded Crazy’s as he pressed forward. Crazy caught movement on his periphery, and a smudged body of brown came from his left, rooted a jagged piece of steel up into Angel’s kidney, twisted it from side to side until it broke from the handle. Hyena said, “Or in the grave.” The three destinations of an MS member’s life.

  Angel winced in surprise, dropped his blade, and glanced down in horror at Hyena, mouthing, “Why?” Hyena said, “’Cause I want to be the first word. Not the second if I ever get released. I want my schooling on the inside, no county time, state time.”

  Crazy glanced at the bag of cash, what started all of this, grabbed it, and moved to the restroom’s opening. Hyena looked up at Crazy, knowing he couldn’t stand up and stop him from having something he’d never get, a chance at freedom, but he knew if they ever crossed again, he’d kill him. Hyena was ready to graduate to the next level, prison, where he’d get his stripes from the higher-ups, and if he ever got out he’d be a god on the streets. He pulled Angel to the tiled floor, looked to Shank, and said, “We finish him.” They swarmed Angel.

  Crazy stood in the doorway holding the money, his body floured by the moisture of his wounds, his heart still pumping with shock, watching Hyena’s fingers dig into Angel’s head, listening to the repetitive crack and give of Angel’s skull slamming into the bathroom ceramic. Crazy remembered that in El Salvador, after the jumping-in he had to seal his initiation, spill someone else’s blood. He remembered watching a rival clique member steal a hen from a villager. Holding it upside down by its yellow-clawing hinds, he ran. Unseen, Crazy followed the rival to a yard knotted by cinder and soil, where he heaved and smashed the chicken’s head against the earth, stomped a foot down on its head, ripped it off like a rubber Halloween mask, and tossed it into the dirt. Crazy pulled his knife free, came up behind the rival, slashed through the cartilage of his Adam’s apple. Watched him wobble and stumble to the ground like the bird with its bloody knob of bone in place of its face, thrashing the earth until it bled out.

  And these men weren’t even rivals. Just more numbers.

  Flame lay on the floor, moaning, the whites of his eyes divided and saucy. Before Crazy turned his back, he traced the four points of an imaginary crucifix over his body, bowed his head and asked forgiveness from La Santa Muerte. Then he stepped out of the restroom. Into the chaos of men and women who looked like him but were nothing close. Down in the distance he saw a man running toward him, T-shirt, black ball cap with bold white letters that spelled police, his weapon drawn. An aging face of worry. It was Mitchell. Crazy lowered his head, blending in with the other workers who were fleeing to the parking lot, where he’d find his sovereignty.

  In the restroom, red rivered from the bodies of Shank, Hyena, Angel, and Flame. The only chest that wasn’t rising was Angel’s.

  The bell rang. The break was over. The men who survived knew their working alongside the other immigrants would no longer camouflage who they were, the Mara Salvatrucha. That they would go to the second stage toward their destination in this life, the state prison, where they would become initiated with new rituals and rules that differed from those in the county lockup. On the outside more numbers would step up and take their place in this unending ecosystem of violence. But one would get a second chance, a fresh start with a sack of cash, while Mitchell stood in the bathroom, realizing he’d fucked up.

  Iris had reviewed it a thousand times. He rested one hand at his waist, beneath his untucked flannel, gripped the .40-caliber H&K, wanting to right his wrongs.

  Standing in Chancellor’s barn, a red-and-silver gas can lay upturned. The wood floor creaked beneath the weight of his boots. Strong hints of fuel mixed with the sour scents from the shapes and the weeks of their training.
Each dog lay within the steel cages, muscles etched and carved like stone beneath their hides of white and black, as they waited to take their turn. Being muzzled and leashed for another day of training. Iris shook his head, wishing there was another way.

  He pressed the pistol into the cage closest to the barn door, having calculated the outcome. Five dogs. Caged. Men at least a hundred feet away down in the house. Some sleeping, some hungover. Behind him was a hay floor and the horse stalls. The route he’d taken into the barn this morning. Parked his truck out back just in case he got that far. His ears would be ringing after the first shot. Whether he’d live or die mattered little to him, only that he righted what he’d wronged with this Chancellor, who was more savage than human.

  Iris had always been a man of his word but his word didn’t carry much weight anymore. He pointed the pistol at the first dog, Archie. Said, “Forgive me.” Looked into the carnage-filled brown eyes with a cold nose. Iris pulled the trigger. The other dogs jerked and growled. Skull and brain pasted through the cage onto the neighboring hound. He moved to the next, trembling, pointing the pistol and pulling the trigger. He did this until he’d reached the last one, Spade. His hearing full of static, he felt a man enter the barn. Iris took in the profile, unlaced boots and blanched jeans, shirtless with an eagle atop the circular world and an anchor behind it inked upon his chest, a pistol in his right hand. Chancellor’s face cringed the shade of mashed cherries, seeing his dogs splayed about the cages, one after the next. He lifted the Glock at Iris, screaming, “The shit you done, you ol’—” Iris lined up his pistol with Chancellor’s chest, tugged the trigger, and ended the world that had branded his heart with inhumane ways. Chancellor breathed his last breath and dropped to the wood floor.