The Shake
couldn’t see me, I hopped the fence and moved quietly toward a group of six cows, four of which were lying down near a feeding trough. These were dairy cows, which tended to be fairly placid and would usually allow me to approach without losing their wits, if they happened to have any. I chose one of the two standing cows, approached it slowly, then rubbed its flank to calm it. With a small ceramic knife I’d brought along for the purpose, I made an incision on the inside of the left front leg. I had taken a couple of pints of blood when I saw the lights of a car coming from the north down Sloughhouse Road. The car slowed as it passed Karla, but continued on south.If I would have been paying more attention, I would have seen the lights abruptly go out further down the road. I did hear a car door open and close, but the sound came from well south of where Karla was parked. I should have been more cautious, but I went back to my dinner. A couple of minutes later, I heard voices, one male and one female, talking quietly, then the sound of Karla’s car door opening. I stood up and sniffed the air, catching the scent of Karla’s perfume, and then a different scent. A male scent.
I jogged back to the road, then walked quietly toward our car. The driver’s door was open and a man was standing against it, preventing it from being closed. I could see Karla’s profile through the rear window. She was leaning away from the open door, as far as she could without climbing over the center console. As I began to catch the guy’s words, “...matter, baby? You can’t spare a little?” I picked up my pace.
He was reaching in with his right hand, trying to take hold of Karla. I could hear the fear in her voice, hissing “No!” as she tried to brush his hand away.
“You want me to hurt you, I guess,” he said, reasonably, as if it were her intention rather then his.
He let go of the door and started to go after her with both hands. As he bent down to extend his reach, I tapped the rear fender with my knuckles. He turned his head, froze momentarily when he saw me, then slowly stood up, turning to face me. He was apparently sure enough of himself to smile. The degree of miscalculation behind that smile almost made me laugh. I thought of a story by Chuang-tzu, one of the two Taoist sages, about a praying mantis in the road. As it is about to be crushed by the wheel of a carriage, it raises its arms in a posture of threat. The little critter just didn’t get it.
When the guy stood up, Karla scrambled over the console and out the passenger door. She stumbled a few steps away from the car before spinning around. I glanced at her calmly, which seemed to confuse her. Her eyes darted back and forth between me and the guy, but she didn’t say anything, just stood there breathing hard.
“This your daddy?” the guy asked Karla, but without taking his eyes off me.
“Shake,” she whispered.
The guy took a large folding knife out of his pocket, opened the blade, and held it out in front of him to give me a good look. He had definitely watched too many movies. “We can do this the easy way,” he said, “or the hard way.”
I wondered how many times he’d fantasized about using that line on someone. Who knows, maybe it was his favorite line and he used it a lot. He was quite a bit bigger than me, broad and muscular and no doubt mean as hell.
“Since you’re offering us a choice,” I said, “what’s the easy way?”
“The easy way,” he said, “is you get in your car and drive away and forget any of this happened.”
“And the hard way?”
The pleasure he took in describing the hard way suggested his preference. “The hard way, fuck head, is I gut you and then me and the girl take up where we left off.”
I looked at Karla. She was wide-eyed. The guy had given her a bad scare. If I let him walk, the whole experience would be so negative for her, she might decide to quit. I thought I’d better give her a clearer idea of who was on her side.
“Let’s do it the hard way.” I said.
There was a moment of surprised confusion before he smiled even wider. He stepped away from the door and circled out into the street so that, facing him, I had my back to the car. He was waving the knife back and forth in some way he must have thought was threatening. I was pretty sure we’d both seen a lot of the same movies, so I raised my hands a few inches, palms up, and gestured with my fingers for him to come forward. The smile disappeared, his eyes narrowed and he came at me, swiping the knife at my face.
I caught his knife hand by the wrist, forcing it out away from our bodies. With my other hand, I grabbed a handful of his jacket and pulled him in close, holding him immobile against his effort to pull away. Our faces were only a few inches apart. I held him there, watching the bravado draining out of his eyes, replaced first by confusion, then by fear. I was squeezing his wrist, slowly increasing the pressure, giving him time to let the disbelief sink in. He dropped the knife and screamed with pain as the bones in his wrist snapped.
“Down,” I said, lowering him, “on your knees.”
When the knife hit the pavement, I heard Karla exhale, then her footsteps coming around the front of the car. She stopped a few feet away, her fists pressed to her chest, as if she were shielding herself from something. She was