Hell in Heaven

CHAPTER TWELVE

Matt froze, looking for the source of the cry.

"Over there!" Mouse pointed at a small shack on the left side of the road.

Matt ran toward the shack, not noticing that the pain in his ankle had all but disappeared, his cracked ribs seemed to have knit back together. All he could think about was that scream, and what it could mean.

When he got to the far side of the shack, what he saw was worse than anything he could have imagined.

There was blood everywhere, an inch deep even as it soaked into the dry ground. Two men lay on the ground, covered in gore, each with a hand on the other's throat. Their free hands were outstretched as if they were begging not to be killed, and at first Matt thought they had both died this way.

Then he saw them move, and realized they were struggling in the mud and blood. Fighting to reach the machete that lay just out of their reach.

Matt vaulted over a decaying split rail fence, then took three long steps and brought his foot down on the machete just as one of the men reached its handle.

"What the hell do you think -" the man grunted. And then he stopped as he looked up and saw Matt standing over him. His hand fell away from the knife, and then slowly he rolled away from the other man. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize it was you."

Matt didn't know why that should make a difference. Maybe the slayer of Joan was entitled to some respect in this town. Then he realized he was still carrying the axe. It fit so comfortably in his hand he'd forgotten he'd been holding it the entire time. So it was possible that it was simply a matter of the axe in the hand outweighing the machete on the ground. Whatever the reason, the two men had stopped trying to kill each other.

For the moment.

"Get to your feet," Matt said, then turned to the other one. "You, too."

Both men rose. Matt couldn't tell if they'd been among the ones he met on Main Street. Blood obscured their features and covered their clothes. They stared down at their feet like schoolchildren waiting for a scolding.

Matt tried to figure out what he was supposed to do here. If he was King Conan, he supposed he would just cut both their heads off. That didn't have a lot of appeal for him.

Before the silence had dragged on long enough so that that even these two would realize Matt had no idea what he was doing, Mouse ran up beside him. She gave the two men a quick, dismissive glance, then ducked around them to where a mound of bloody flesh lay on the ground.

"That's Sweetpie," she said accusingly. "Which one of you two did this?"

Mouse kneeled in the blood and gently stroked what Matt could now make out as the head of a large pig. The animal was dead, its throat slit and its body hacked to shreds, apparently with the bloody machete that still stuck out of one wound. Astonishingly, there were still a few dribbles of blood oozing out of the body, despite the flood that covered its sty.

"It was this murdering bastard," the first man said. "Alwyn Hoggins came running in here waving that blade over his head like a madman and killed my poor Sweetpie, and her getting ready to breed again in the Spring."

"Your poor Sweetpie is the only murderer here," said the other one, whom Matt now realized he had met in the line-up with a cluster of other Hogginses. "You Vetches think you own this town and everyone in it. But that doesn't give you the right to let your pigs run free in my chicken coop. Killed eight of my best layers and chased off three more. I told you last time what would happen if that beast got into my hens, and I meant it."

"My Sweetpie wouldn't hurt your damn hens. Just because you can't string chicken wire tight enough to keep out the foxes, you've got to blame your problems on me."

"You're so sure of that, Ezekiel Vetch, then let's cut open that fat sow's belly and see what we got in there," Alwyn said.

"Sure thing," Vetch said. "Right after we cut open yours. You don't have that bitch protecting you anymore."

Ezekiel Vetch dived down to the bloody ground and grabbed for the machete. Matt stepped back, then kicked him hard on the chin. Vetch rolled over, clutching his head. Hoggins jumped on his enemy, flipped him over, and pressed his head down in the blood.

"He's killing him," Mouse squealed. "You've got to do something."

Matt raised the axe over his head and -

"You can't kill them," Mouse said so quickly and frantically that Matt could barely make out the words. "That's not why I summoned you here. You can't do that. You can't."

– brought it down on a galvanized water pan, splitting it in half and letting out a ringing noise so loud it could have been heard at the highway.

The two men broke apart, staring up at him.

"Next time it hits flesh and bone," Matt said. "You understand?"

"Yes, sir," Ezekiel Vetch said.

"You bet," Alwyn Hoggins said.

"Now get up!" Matt had to repress an urge to laugh. He'd seen himself as King Conan, but he sounded more like a kindergarten teacher. In a sane world, both of these men would tell him to fuck himself, and do to him what Hoggins had done to the pig if he refused. But this must not have been a sane world, because both men were getting sheepishly to their feet.

What was he supposed to do now? If he walked away again, the two men were going to start trying to kill each other again. Not that he could bring himself to care all that much about either of them. But Mouse did seem concerned, even frantic. He thought back to when he was ten years old and had gotten into a fistfight with his best friend, Eli Messenger. His father had caught them, pulled them apart, and then made them apologize and shake hands, after which the boys went back and finished the Monopoly game that had started the fight. Trouble was, Matt suspected that neither of the two farmers had the maturity and wisdom that he and Eli had possessed before puberty.

There was a tugging at his sleeve. He bent down so Mouse could whisper in his ear. "You've got to settle this," she said.

"Why me?" Matt said. "They're not going to listen to me."

"There's no one else," Mouse said. "If you walk away, they're going to kill each other. You can't let that happen."

Matt suspected that whatever he did, that eventuality would occur sooner or later. But at least he could try to put it off for a little while. He cleared his throat, stalling for time as he tried to figure out how to end this quickly and without any human blood being spilled.

"Alwyn Hoggins," he said.

"Yes, sir." Hoggins actually straightened his back and threw out his shoulders when Matt said his name, as if it was his drill inspector talking to him.

Or royalty.

"You admit that you killed this pig belonging to Ezekiel Vetch?" The words coming out of his mouth were oddly formal, but that seemed to be what both men expected.

"She was killing my chickens," Hoggins whined. "And I warned him and I warned him but he -"

"Quiet!" Matt roared.

Hoggins' mouth snapped shut in mid-complaint.

"I am going to ask you again, and this time you will only give me the information I requested," Matt said. "Is that clear?"

Hoggins nodded.

"Did you kill the pig belonging to Ezekiel Vetch?"

"Yes," Hoggins said. "I did that. I killed her."

It was clear that there was an explanation trying to burst its way out of his mouth. Matt held up a hand and Hoggins fell silent.

"Ezekiel Vetch," Matt said. "Is it true that your pig broke into this man's henhouse and killed his chickens?"

"He can't prove anything," Vetch said. "He's just blaming me for his own problems."

"I see," Matt said. "I believe Alwyn Hoggins had a way to discover the truth of the matter." He hefted his axe, then leveled the head at the corpse of the pig. "Are you willing to undertake the experiment?"

"Who knows what that lying sack of shit has planted inside my poor Sweetpie's stomach," Vetch said. "He might have been cramming her full of feathers before I got here. In fact, I'm pretty sure that -"

"Enough!" Matt roared, and Vetch reared back as if the Great and Powerful Wizard of Oz had just let out another blast of flame and smoke. Good thing they don't know who's really behind the curtain, Matt thought. "Alwyn Hoggins, how many chickens did you lose today?"

"The number's hard to say," Hoggins said, a smile of victory cracking the drying blood that covered his face. "There were the eight this monster killed and the three it ran off, of course. But my chickens are delicate creatures, they are. A trauma like this could leave them unfit for laying the rest of their lives and I'll be putting out for their feed and getting nothing in return."

"So you lost eleven, right?" Matt said.

For a moment Hoggins looked like he was going to continue his objection. But he cast a quick glance at the axe and swallowed hard. "As far as I can tell today, yes, eleven."

"And how many chickens was that pig worth?"

Both men started to talk at once. Matt raised his axe and they fell silent.

"Mary Elizabeth Gilhoolie, sister of Vern, leader of all the Gilhoolies and the Hogginses as well, tell me the truth on pain of punishment," Matt roared, doing his best to capture the cadences in all the barbarian movies he'd ever seen. "How many chickens are equal to the value of the pig this man called Sweetpie?"

"No more than twenty," Mouse said.

"The girl don't know what she's talking about," Vetch said. "The sow was in the prime of her life, could have turned out another three litters easy."

"She was older than I am," Mouse said.

"You're confusing her with my old sow, also named Sweetpie," Vetch said. "Named this one for her, since I've always been sentimental that way and -"

Matt didn't bother to speak this time. He raised the axe and Vetch fell silent.

"Twenty chickens," Mouse said again. This time there were no complaints.

"This is my judgment," Matt said. "Since Alwyn Hoggins killed a pig worth twenty chickens, and his loss from the pig's attack was only eleven chickens, then Ezekiel Vetch must pay him nine chickens, or the equivalent in whatever means of barter shall be mutually agreed upon by both parties. In return, Hoggins may keep the pig carcass to do with as he pleases. "

Both blood-drenched men stared at him silently. They seemed to be waiting for him to do or say something else. Matt considered throwing in an "amen," but it didn't seem appropriate for the occasion. Finally something popped into his head from an old movie he couldn't identify. "So it shall be written, so it shall be done."

He waved the axe in the air, then turned and walked away, trusting the two men would not go back to trying to kill each other.