Chapter 12 – Juliette #2
Tank had his arms pinned around me so I couldn’t reach for the frying pan and smash his face with the hot oil. Instead, he dragged me away from the stove and bent me forward over the kitchen table.
I kicked my legs at him from behind, hoping I’d hit his crotch.
“You fucker!” I screamed again.
He let me go, but used my momentum to turn me over so my back was on the table. I scrambled for something but only found salt and pepper shakers. Glass ones, that I threw at his head.
One smacked him in the eye and he snarled. I knew what was coming before it happened.
Herb didn’t hit me often, but when he did it was a solid crack of his palm against my face or on the back of my head. Tank hit me with his backhand and it felt like my eye was going to explode. For a second I wondered if it had, because all I could see were black splotches in my vision.
Then an explosion of sound happened and I knew it was the back door slamming open against the wall.
Uh, oh, I thought. Tank was in for it now.
Instantly, he was pulled away from me. Screaming almost as loud as I was.
Because I was free of his groping hands, I was able to slide back further on the kitchen table until I was sitting up.
Jokingly, I’d called Creed’s dark eyes sharklike, but now I could see the similarity. You know how a shark’s eyes do that thing where they roll back? Like they’re protecting their eyeballs right before they go in for the kill?
That’s what Creed looked like now. Like he’d left humanity behind and was only focused on the kill.
He had his fist in Tank’s hair, and the way Tank was screaming, it sounded like Creed was ripping it out at the roots. With a casual jerk of his leg, he hit the back of Tank’s knee so Tank was on the kitchen floor.
Creed let go of Tank’s hair to snatch the drunk’s wrist and pull it back so far up his back…
“Ahhh!”
Yeah, the dude’s shoulder was now officially separated.
Creed squeezed on that separated shoulder with one hand while he looked at Tank’s body as if deciding where to inflict the most pain next.
“Don’t kill him,” I said. “We don’t need that kind of trouble. And he needs to drive away from here tonight.”
Creed looked up, blinked a few times, then focused in on me.
“He hurt you?”
“Nah,” I said, my hand covering up what was probably the swollen left side of my face. “But if he fucking made me burn those pork chops, then you can kill him.”
I got up to turn the heat off the stove, and then, as casually as I could, walked over to the freezer to fetch a frozen bag of peas for my cheek.
“The fuck, man?” Tank groaned. “I was just having some fun and the bitch hit me.”
“I wish I had,” I said, leaning against the closed refrigerator.
I knew I sounded tough. Like la-di-da, who doesn’t handle almost getting raped with such casualness?
Inside, I was shaking like a leaf. If Tank had waited another minute, two minutes, Creed might not have heard me screaming.
“What did I tell you would happen if you touched her?”
“You’re not seeing what we could have here, brother,” Tank panted. “A fucking life, some pussy on the side. What is your problem?”
Creed bent over him and wrapped his massive arm under the dude’s neck. I could see his muscles squeezing and watched as Tank’s face got redder and redder.
“My first problem is that you’re not my brother,” Creed said. He released his arm and Tank fell face forward onto the kitchen floor.
“So, you did kill him?”
Creed shook his head. “He’s not dead.”
He bent down and maneuvered Tank’s body until he had him draped over his shoulder in a fireman’s grip. He didn’t even break a sweat doing it.
“Get his shit and then get in your truck and follow me.”
“Where are we going to dump him?” I asked.
“Away.”
“Okay, but let’s keep our eyes out for the Talley horse. And I don’t care how tough those pork chops are when we get back, we’re eating them.”
Away was a motel parking lot an hour and a half away from Riverbend.
I leaned against the passenger door of my truck, parked across the street, and watched Creed say who knows what to Tank, who had finally regained consciousness.
He’d dumped Tank’s body into the bed of Tank’s rental truck when we left the house. I’d packed up all his clothes and bottles and tossed them in with him, then followed Creed as he drove Tank’s truck.
Now, as we were parked outside the motel, he had a fistful of Tank’s t-shirt and was pointing his finger in the drunk’s face.
After a minute, Creed dropped the shirt, hopped out of the truck bed in a smooth motion and made his way across the street to me.
“Keys,” he said. I tossed him the keys and he walked around the hood to get into the driver’s seat.
I took that as my cue to climb into the passenger seat.
“What did you tell him?” I said, slamming the door behind me.
“To lose my address,” Creed said, turning the engine and pulling us back onto the empty road.
“Or else,” I added. “Right? You gave him the or else part. Otherwise, how will he know you mean business?”
Creed shot me a look like what I’d said was stupid. “Trust me. It’s implied. You need to know something about me, Jules.”
“I know you weren’t some dude in a sailor suit hanging out on a ship.”
I tried to imagine him in the blue jumpsuit with the white lapels and that image would not form.
“No, I wasn’t,” he admitted. “But that’s not it. I don’t know who Tank might have talked to about coming to see me. And folks in town would have seen us together when I took him to the bar. So I couldn’t kill him. But he comes back and that won’t matter. You understand what I’m saying?”
He was saying he could kill a man. He was saying he would kill a man if he had to. Which probably meant, he’d done it before.
I didn’t want to think about that. Or how easily he’d taken a man of Tank’s size to our kitchen floor.
So I tried to change the subject.
“I’m surprised you let him get away with calling you Chief. A little racist, no?”
Creed barked out a laugh. “He called me Chief because of my rank, not because I’m half Native. I was a CPO. Chief Petty Officer.”
“Ohhh. Wow. Does that make me the racist then?”
And, unbelievably, given the night we’d had, we both started laughing hysterically.