Blasphemy Read Free

doctor’s body, pulled down his pants and underwear, and shoved that pistol into Dr. Bob’s ass.
    Even then, I knew there was some battered train track stretching between Junior’s torture in prison and that violation of Dr. Bob’s body.
    No more, I said, no more.
    Junior stared at me with such hatred, such pain, that I thought he might kill me, too. But then his eyes filled with something worse: logic.
    We have to get rid of the body, he said.
    I shook my head. At least, I think I shook my head.
    You owe me, he said.
    That was it. I couldn’t deny him. I helped him clean up the blood and bone and brain, and wrap Dr. Bob in a blanket, and throw him into the trunk of the car.
    I know where to dump him, Junior said.
    So we drove deep into the forest, to the end of a dirt road that had started, centuries ago, as a game trail. Then we carried Dr. Bob’s body through the deep woods toward a low canyon that Junior had discovered during his tree-painting job.
    Nobody will ever find the body, Junior said.
    As we trudged along, mosquitoes and flies, attracted by the blood, swarmed us. I must have gotten bit a hundred times or more. Soon enough, Junior and I were bleeding onto Dr. Bob’s body.
    Blood for blood. Blood with blood.
    After a few hours of dragging that body through the wilderness, we reached Junior’s canyon. It was maybe ten feet across and choked with brush and small trees.
    He’s going to get caught up in the branches, I said.
    Jesus, I thought, I’m terrified of my own logic.
    Just throw him real hard, Junior said.
    So we somehow found the strength to lift Dr. Bob over our heads and hurl him into the canyon. His body crashed through the green and came to rest, unseen, somewhere below us.
    Maybe you want to say a few words, Junior said.
    Don’t be so fucking mean, I said, we’ve done something awful here.
    Junior laughed.
    You should throw that gun down there, too, I said.
    I paid five hundred bucks for this, Junior said. I’m keeping it.
    He stuffed the gun down the back of his jeans. I didn’t like it but I didn’t want to piss him off.
    As we slogged back toward the car, Junior started talking childhood memories. He and I, as babies, had slept in the same crib, and we’d lost our virginities at the same time in the same bedroom with a pair of sisters. And now we had killed together, so we were more than cousins, more than best friends, and more than brothers. We were the same person.
    Of course, I kept reminding myself that I didn’t touch Dr. Bob. I didn’t pistol-whip him or punch him or slap him. And I certainly didn’t shoot him. But I’d helped Junior dispose of the body and that made me a criminal.
    When we made it back to the car, Junior stopped and stared at the stars, newly arrived in the sky.
    Then he pulled out the pistol and pointed it at the ground.
    You’re going to keep quiet about this, he said.
    I stared at the gun. He saw me staring at the gun. I knew he was deciding whether to kill me or not. And I guess his love for me, or whatever it was that he called love, won him over. He turned and threw the pistol as far as he could into the dark.
    We silently drove back down that dirt road. As he dropped me at my house, he cried a little, and hugged me.
    You owe me, he said.
    After he drove away, I climbed onto the roof of my house. It seemed like the right thing to do. Folks would later me call me Snoopy, and I would love laughing with them, but at the time, it seemed like a serious act.
    I wanted to be in a place where I’d never been before and think about the grotesquely new thing that I’d just done, and what I needed to do about it. But I was too exhausted for much thought or action, so I closed my eyes and fell asleep.
    The next morning, I woke wet and cold, climbed off the roof, and went to the Tribal Police. A couple hours after I told them the story, the Feds showed up. And a few hours after that, I led them to Dr. Bob’s body.
    Later that night, as the police laid siege to