“A Town Called Disdain”, Episode 82: loaded

Larry Winchester (“...makes Cormac McCarthy seem effete.” -- Harold Bloom) now turns the Panavision lens of his prose to Enid, tooling down a desert road in her truck some several miles outside of a town called Disdain...

Enid came to the top of the rise and down there on the road about a mile away she saw the lights of the Motorpsychos, circling in a silvery cloud of dust like a pack of cocaine-crazed lightning bugs.

Fabulous, just what she needed to run into on her way home, and blasted out of her skull on peyote to boot.

She stopped the truck, put it in neutral and cut her lights.
She popped open her glove compartment and took out a pair of binoculars that she used for scouting the desert for interesting boulders for her sculptures. She focused in to the center of the circling motorcyclists and there she saw Hope Johnstone, sitting on her black pony Whisper.

Great, just great.

She shoved the binoculars back into the glove compartment and took out her father’s heavy old army .45. She checked the magazine, it was full, she shoved it back in and jacked a round into the breech. Unfortunately the gun only held seven rounds, and there were about twenty-five Motorpsychos down there. Well, what the hell.She stuck the gun into the waistband of her jeans, and, keeping the lights off, she put the truck in gear.

****

Moloch stood in the center of his circling men with one hand on the reins of Hope’s pony. With his other hand he stroked the animal’s mane. Through his mirrored shades his one good eye looked up into Hope’s eyes. She was beautiful. She looked young and good and innocent and intelligent, and so, reflexively, he wished to defile her. He also now wished that he had not wanked off back there in the cave. He might not be able to achieve an erection right away, or possibly at all. He supposed he’d have to let the other fellows go first whilst his wretched seed regenerated itself. But perhaps it would be better that way.

“Do you know who my father is?” asked Hope.

“No,” said Moloch. “Richard Nixon?”

Hope rolled her eyes.

“No, asswipe. He’s Big Jake Johnstone.”

“Oh. Really?”

Moloch had met Big Jake on various occasions and had often done drug business with him. But he couldn’t say he liked the fellow. But of course Moloch didn’t like anyone.

“If you hurt me,” said Hope, “he’ll have you killed.”

“Oh, no doubt, no doubt. And you must be,” said Moloch, brightly, “oh dear, what is it? Faith? Charity?”

“Hope,” she said. “Well, originally it was Esperanza, but Papa calls me Hope.”

“No matter. But tell me, how are those new guests at the hacienda? That Ridpath couple,” he added, as if casually.

“How did you know their real names?”

“Are they at home now?”

“I’ll never tell you where they are. You can pull my toenails out.”

“Don’t give me ideas.”

“And even if I did tell you and you found them, Dick would kill you.”

“Oh would he now?”

Moloch quickly took out his knife and in one swift motion drove it into the pony’s neck up to the hilt.

Hope felt the horse collapsing under her and she leapt out of the saddle and stood and watched as Whisper slumped down and then turned over on his side, dead.

The Motorpsychos all stopped their machines, and the belching and farting engines grew silent, as silent as the men themselves.

“You’re a dead man,” said Hope to Moloch. She turned full around, addressing the rest of the Motorpsychos: “You’re all dead. Every one of you.” Now she faced Moloch again: “You’re dead.”

“Oh,” said Moloch. He wiped both sides of his blade on his leather trousers, then slipped the knife back into its sheath. “Are we now?”

Then came the sound of a heavy motor roaring down the road and everyone turned and saw the dark hulk of Enid’s truck barreling straight toward them.

****

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