Eyebrows.
Broker’s nickname in the world of snitches, gun dealers, and dope entrepreneurs, where his last official act had been to arrest Rodney. And he now recalled Rodney’s parting words, screamed as they stuffed him into a cruiser-“I’ll kill you, motherfucker, if it’s the last thing I ever do.”
Now here was Rodney shifting a bat in his ham-sized hands. Teamed up with Earl. Getting his wish.
Not good.
But then-Rodney developed instant eloquent possibilities as a mime; recognizing Broker, he shook his head, pleaded with his eyes, and took a step back all in the same second:
You don’t know me, I don’t know you; this is a mistake; I’m outa here.
Broker nodded ever so slightly and Rodney started backing away, flipping a very abbreviated wave good-bye, close to his hip and behind Earl’s back.
“What’d you bring him for, Earl-to block the sun?” Broker asked, encouraged by the changing odds. His eyes took in everything in the barn garage in half a second and came up with a plan. He had one chance not to wind up in an emergency ward, or worse. Even with Rodney opting out, barehanded, even in his prime, he couldn’t go up against a bat wielded by a street monster like Earl and hope to come out unscathed.
“I don’t like it,” Rodney yelled, backing away. “I highly suggest we get the fuck outa here.”
“No way; it’s gonna cost him at least a knee.” Earl stepped forward in a modified batter’s stance, gauging his target.
Broker was not about to show Earl anything like fear. He was pissed about his spat with Amy. And he could still smell burnt chili. So he stuck out his chin and taunted, “Earl, be a good little computer nerd and take his advice, because this is just the wrong time to mess with me.”
The facts of his situation were far less nonchalant. So, as he moved back to keep the same amount of distance between himself and Earl, he raised the bucket of feed to port arms, to protect himself. He was exactly where he wanted to be-within an easy reach of the dead bolt that fastened the gate to Popeye’s pen.
J.T., buddy; I hope you weren’t putting me on.
Earl stepped forward, menacing. The bat gleamed in the overhead sodium vapor light. Brand-new, not a scratch on the scripted logo or the clean-grained ash. Earl heaved his shoulders, feinting a swing. Broker moved as Earl moved, tossing the feed bucket at Earl’s face.
Whack! Earl swung. Feed pellets exploded from the shattered plastic container.
“Yeah,” Earl giggled, an hysterical wheezing giggle on the far edge of control. He had feed pellets in his hair, he had a pale, berserker light in his eyes. Broker instinctively realized why Earl had brought Rodney as extra muscle.
It wasn’t to help work Broker over.
It was to pull him off when he lost control and was beating Broker to death.
But Rodney had disappeared out the door into the gray afternoon and Earl, sans backup, had cocked the bat again. Trembling with pleasure and rage, he took another step forward.
Okay. Life had become very simple. If he tried to close the distance and grapple, Broker would for sure take at least one blow going in. So that was out. He needed to get something between his skull and that bat. Broker’s hand reached back, seized the bolt, yanked it, and pulled the thick, chest-high gate open.
Earl let go a blinding overhand swing and Broker went to his knees, ducking as the bat smashed down, denting the framing on the top of the gate just above and behind Broker’s head. As Earl recovered, Broker scooted around to the other side of the gate and pulled it full-arc on its hinges, so he was squeezed behind it, tight against the plywood outer wall of the pen.
“What a chickenshit,” Earl sneered, trying another overhand swing that harmlessly glanced off the gate and thumped the wall. Broker was contorted sideways, one shoulder back, flattened against the wall; his other arm folded against his chest, his hand gripping the simple handle under the bolt, holding the door against him.
Earl could prod into the limited space with the bat, but he could no longer swing. So he tried to pummel Broker, but Broker grabbed at the end and tried to twist it away. With difficulty, Earl yanked it back out of the cranny.
“Give it up, Earl!” Broker yelled. “Walk away now and you won’t get hurt.”
“Can you believe this guy, Rodney. .” And then, “Rodney?”
And then.
The high hissing sound Earl and Broker heard was all the more unnerving because its source was not mechanical but animal, because it issued from the quilled throat of an infuriated four-hundred-pound male ostrich. Popeye’s massive thigh muscles trembled, tensing, at about the same level as Earl’s shoulders. The bird’s wings flung up, rampant, and the stiff plumes lashed the doorway of the open stall.
“Now what the fuck is this?” Earl muttered as he looked up into Popeye’s bloodshot eyes. Fearlessly ignorant of his situation, he taunted Broker, “Won’t work, hiding behind Big Bird. Uh-uh.”
Broker came up to look over the gate as Earl shifted his feet to take a swing at the hissing bird. He let go an indolent one-handed swat aimed at Popeye’s head.
Like shoo.
The ostrich’s right leg cocked and shot straight forward, the scaley big toe with its claw knuckled. Earl was lucky; because of his wide haymaker swing he was rotating and Popeye struck him a glancing blow in the chest, ripping buckles and buttons off the leather trench coat. Even off target, the kick connected like an electric shock and sent Earl flying back against the tractor, and then rolling on the floor.
He scrambled to his feet, holding his ribs with one hand and reaching for the dropped bat with the other. “Son of a bitch,” he gasped.
The bird stepped into the garage and Broker lowered himself eye-level with the top of the door. Popeye’s ominous grace was an optical illusion. His long legs seemed to be moving in slow-motion when in fact they weren’t. They were lining up on Earl again.
Less bellicose now, Earl’s face was working overtime on the proposition that a mere bird could kill a man. He gripped the bat and assessed the distance to the open garage door. Instinctively, he tried to go around the high-stepping bird.
“No, no,” Broker yelled, safe behind his thick gate. “Stay in front of him. They kick to the side.”
Wide-eyed, shaken, Earl changed direction.
Dumb shit.
This time Popeye hit Earl squarely in the left upper arm. Earl screamed as he smashed against the concrete. The kick shredded the trench coat sleeve. Dots of blood stippled the floor. Earl’s ragged shoulder flopped like a rag doll’s.
Serves you right.
Then someone turned his name into a high-pitched, infuriated indictment: “Bro-KER!”
Amy stood in the doorway waving her arms to distract Popeye.
“Do something, he’s gonna to get killed!” Amy hollered.
Popeye’s tiny head rotated on his long neck, big-eyed and comic in contrast to his lethal feet, which shifted on the cement. Amy continued to wave her arms. Earl, his left arm useless, lay collapsed against the tractor tire like the statue of the Dying Gaul.
Broker would have liked to see Popeye get in a few more licks. But now, worried that Amy would get within Popeye’s kicking radius, he scrambled from the shelter of his plywood gate and saw the long-handled bar shovel leaning against the wall of the pen.
“Please. .” Earl moaned.
“Get behind that tractor,” Broker shouted at Amy.
“What about. .?” she shouted back as she took cover.
Broker sprang for the shovel, grabbed it, and thrust it at the bird. J.T. had told him that male ostriches were territorial. No way Popeye would just walk away.
He shouted to Amy, “I’m going to distract him. You gotta come under the tractor and pull Earl out of range, get him outside, and close the door. Do it.”
Amy darted under the big John Deere. “Crawl toward me,” she shouted at Earl.
“Huh?” Earl shook his head, confused.
Broker advanced with the shovel extended. Popeye gauged this new intruder’s approach, shifted his stance, and stepped back into a tangle of loose wire that lay on the floor.
The bird kicked to free his foot from the coils. Old tin cans threaded in the rusty wire made a racket when Popeye snarled his leg. Tangled in the rattle wire, Popeye’s demeanor totally changed. Spooked, he bolted for the open door.
Broker watched the bird accelerate across the yard in bounds so powerful, they looked like special effects. Zero to forty in three seconds, J.T. had told him. Trailing tin cans, Popeye tore around a tree line and vanished.
Back in the barn, Amy was already stooped over Earl. “Get me a knife. Something to cut the coat with.”
“First I want to talk to my buddy Earl, here,” Broker said.
“Christ’s sake, man,” Earl grimaced in pain, hunching away.
“Broker,” Amy ordered, “I have to see this arm. If it’s compound and has bone sticking out we could sever an artery moving him.”
“Move him?” Broker feigned laughter. “Fuck him, leave him where he’s at.” He tugged Amy to her feet, took a firm grip on her arm, walked her outside.
She pulled away, furious. “That guy. .”
Broker cut her off. “He’s not critical. He’s got a broken arm. So I’m going to mess with him a little. He’s the boyfriend, and he just tried to brain me with a bat and he brought some help.”
Amy’s eyes flashed, she licked her lips. “I saw the other one run.” More eager than cautious, she asked, “Are there more of them?”
She was back in her element; she liked the action and she liked being in it with him. Broker got the powerful impression the ruckus cleared the decks between them.
“Why’d the other one take off?” she asked.
And the answer to that, Broker didn’t know. He shrugged and said, “Because he came to break a leg and got a full, frontal view of a charging male ostrich.”
“Why break your leg?”
Broker grinned. “To chase me away from Jolene.”
Amy grinned with him.
Earl moaned in the barn, “Jesus Christ, will somebody call nine-one-one?”
“Hey, Earl, look out for the rats, there’s these big barn rats in there. I think they got rabies,” Broker yelled, then he turned back to Amy. “Okay, J.T. keeps a first-aid kit on the mud porch. Do not call nine-one-one. We’ll run him over to Timberry Emergency after I have a little talk.”
“You know what you’re doing?”
“Sure, Earl and I are both doing the same thing: trying to scare each other off. He blew his shot. I won’t.”
“Okay,” she squinted at him. “But no more rough stuff. That’s a bad arm.”
Broker held up his hands, palms out-an innocent. “Amy, I never touched the guy.”
She evaluated the look in his eyes. “You would have let that bird kill him,” she said evenly.
“Nah,” Broker grinned. “Not kill him, maybe kick him a few more times, though.”
She turned and jogged to the house. Broker went back in the barn, searched for a moment, and found the bat. To announce himself he swung the bat viscously against the tractor fender. Every time the bat landed, Earl cringed on the floor.
He extended the bat and poked Earl in the ribs. Earl moaned and gritted his teeth.
Broker shook his head. “For some reason, Jolene doesn’t want you hurt too bad, so it can end right here. If we can understand each other.”
“I need to go to a hospital,” Earl said between clenched teeth.
“Listen carefully,” Broker said. “I copied your hard drive. Jolene assures me there’s enough on there to interest the feds. Credit unions are federal, Earl. You with me so far?”
“Okay, okay.”
“Jolene’s lawyer guarantees you’ll get every cent she owes you-if you back off. You can be friends, but she gets a chance to live her life. That’s the deal.”
Earl’s left cheek and eye were starting to puff black and blue. Shock turned his skin sticky gray. With a face full of blood and dirt, he didn’t look so pretty anymore. “What about all this?” he said.
Broker smiled. “This was just testosterone gone awry.”
“I mean, what are you going to tell them at the hospital?”
Broker shrugged. “I’m watching my buddy’s farm for him, I know you, you wanted to see the birds, you came out and there was an accident.”
Earl sighed in resignation. “Friends with Jolene.”
“But no manipulation. No games,” Broker said.
“Okay,” Earl said. His eyes stayed fixed on the door. Amy came jogging back in with J.T.’s first-aid kit, a knife, and a bedsheet. He asked, “Who’s the chick?”
“Friend of mine. Lucky for you, she’s a nurse.”
Amy quickly cut open Earl’s jacket sleeve and assessed the lacerated shoulder. “Looks worse than it is, superficial muscle damage.” She applied gauze pads to the bleeding and felt around. “The left humerus is snapped, at least once, but it hasn’t poked through the skin. He probably has some cracked ribs.”
Amy decided to immobilize the arm against his chest with the sheet. Broker helped her sit Earl up and tie the makeshift restraint. Then she gave him some Tylenol. Once the arm was secured they hauled him to his feet and walked him to the Jeep.
As they got in, Amy scanned the empty fields and pastures.
“What about the bird?”
“Maybe they come home when they get hungry,” Broker said.