Captains Outrageous Read Free Page A

were away from the headlights, and there was only a little light from the parking lot, I couldn’t see his face well, but there was asphalt hanging from his raw cheeks and his lips looked to be nearly scraped off. He began to beat his chest like Tarzan and yell. He turned, put both hands on the tailgate of my truck, and sprang into the bed, made the roof of the truck, yelled, “I’m a swinging dick,” and did a back flip onto the parking lot, hit hard. He hopped up from that and ran between me and the truck. I picked up the automatic, jumped into the truck. I was hoping the lights hadn’t run down the battery. It cranked. I backed out and went after him.
    He was bearing down on Ella May. Ella May was a heavy black woman who worked in the department where the chickens were run through a neck slicer. On her shift she wore a hooded yellow slicker and high black boots, sat on a throne surrounded by a lake of blood, and it was her job to slit the throats of the survivors with a little hooked knife. She didn’t have her yellow slicker and boots on now, but that knife was her own.
    As he charged her, she jumped back slightly and the knife came out and she cut him, deep. I could see blood fly up between him and her in my headlights. He ran right over her and kept running. He could have rushed around the building and out the open front gate where the shift was changing, but he charged the fence, ready to climb over. I put the pedal to the metal and bore down on him. He was already near the top. I hit the fence hard enough to knock him loose. He fell backward, smashing my windshield. I jerked open the door, leaped out, grabbed him off the hood, slammed him against the side of the truck, and kneed him in the balls two or three times.
    He still succeeded in hitting me in the face. I wavered consciousness but didn’t go down. Ella May had come up on the other side of the truck and she was scrambling across the hood. She got him around the neck and stuck that curved knife in his cheek and pulled for all she was worth, splashing blood and exposing his teeth.
    The guy reached up, grabbed the blade and tore the knife away from her. I got on that knife quick, latched a figure-four on his arm, swung him around and down, and butted his nose with my forehead.
    “I teach you to jump on me, motherfucker,” Ella May said. She came off the hood and landed on his legs, then came around and started kicking him in the head.
    I was beginning to swoon. Black spots swirled in my vision like gnats in the river bottoms. The two security guards who were my and Leonard’s replacements showed up and everyone dog-piled the bastard. We got him rolled over and handcuffed. One of the guards, a black guy I didn’t know, said, “You all right?”
    “There’s a girl,” I said. “He was attacking a girl. Other side of the fence there,” and I pointed.
    “I’ll call some law,” the black guy said.
    I leaned against the truck. Ella May was kicking the guy still. He lay on the ground and took the shots without so much as a grunt. “Motherfucker, run over my ass. I’ll teach your cock not to stand up.”
    One of the guards got hold of her and pulled her back, but she kept fighting. He finally pushed her up against the fence and held her arms behind her back and used his handcuffs on her. All the while, she was screaming.
    “Handcuffs! Handcuffs! I’ll kick your dick over the fence, cocksucker.”
    “Calm down, Ella May,” he said.
    “Calm down, my ass. Motherfucker run over me … You’re hurtin’ my arm, goddamn it. I’ll remember your ugly face.”
    The headlights from my truck, the lights in the lot, the darkness between and around them swirled together and I remembered feeling hot, trying to bend over to breathe better, trying not to faint, but when I bent forward I just kept going.

3
    O UCH ,” I SAID . “Take it easy.”
    Leonard was poking at the deep cut over my eye with the tip of his finger, examining the stitches.
    “One of