No Need to Worry

The wedding ring came off with a strip of skin inside it. Dulsie Flett rubbed it clean on the dead man’s sock and put it in her handbag. He had insisted on bringing his own rifle. Handloaded ammunition, he’d told her over dinner, as though she would know the difference. He was lying on it now.

Across the pen, Ogden had the last hunter folded over his knees. His dinner jacket had split down the back. He was eating with his face against the man’s open belly, and each time he swallowed something substantial, the bullet holes along his shoulders puckered shut. Dulsie had promised the guests a beast that would heal until one of them earned its head. The two bodies by the gate had stopped moving. Four guests, all accounted for.

Dulsie checked her watch. Through the gateway in the dividing wall she could see the outer yard, the floodlights, the firing booth beyond them. A man was moving behind its glass. Norris had finished setting up. She had hired him to operate the lodge’s cannon for the after-dinner demonstration, with a private extra fee if the animal proved dangerous. Ogden believed the cannon was a dead exhibit. She had let him complain all afternoon about paying a gunner to pose beside it.

At forty-eight she owned three good dresses and half a business she couldn’t put on a tax return. Tonight’s cashbox held more money than they had ever taken in one place. With Norris’s fee deducted, the rest would still be hers. No more negotiations over expenses with a man who considered a murdered hotel porter an unexpected meal.

Ogden lifted his face. A grey curl from the hunter’s chest was caught between his front teeth.

“Come and get this fucking button.” He reached over his shoulder and scratched below it. “It’s digging in.”

“Take the jacket off.”

“You said we were keeping it.”

They had paid a tailor for expansion pleats. Ogden had agreed to stop growing when he felt them pull, and once again he had got excited. She put her bag over her shoulder and went behind him. A button on the back vent had caught in the new ridge of flesh along his spine. She picked the thread out with her nail. The smell made her breathe through her mouth.

“There,” she said.

He rolled his shoulders with a grunt of relief. Beneath the torn lining, his skin smoothed itself around the old burn on his back. He always put that scar back. Dulsie had been with him when he’d acquired it, years before his body began doing these things, in a room where the mattress had caught fire. He’d carried her out wrapped in a curtain and then gone back for her purse. She had married somebody else that year. Ogden still enjoyed reminding her how that had turned out.

Behind them, the hired attendant struck the locked gate with a rifle butt.

He was a thick, bearded man with a white streak at his chin. He had been collecting the guests’ spent cartridges when the screaming began. Now he was putting his whole weight into each blow. The latch held. Ogden sat between him and the pen’s only other exit, the dividing gateway. The attendant looked back at Dulsie and stopped hitting the gate.

“You’ve got the key.”

Ogden let the hunter slide off his lap.

“Dulsie. The key.” The attendant dropped the rifle and ran towards her, showing his empty hands. “I’m just here for the evening. I haven’t seen anything.”

She stepped aside. He tried to turn, slipped in the sand and got one knee under him before Ogden caught his belt.

“He’s staff,” Dulsie said.

Ogden held the man against his chest. His jaw began to lengthen. The attendant clawed at the arm under his ribs, then changed his mind and reached for the little penknife in his waistcoat. He got it open. Dulsie saw him stab Ogden twice in the forearm. The second time, the blade stayed there.

“We agreed about staff.”

Ogden bit into the side of the man’s head. The man’s heels battered the sand; one shoe came off. Dulsie stood with her hand over the lodge insignia on her blouse until the kicking ended. She didn’t want to have to clean that as well.

“He was going to tell,” Ogden said. The words were thick. His mouth was still arranging itself.

“Then we could have dealt with him afterwards.”

He pulled the penknife out and spat a piece of ear beside it. “We’re dealing with him now.”

Ordinary meat did the same work. They had spent a winter feeding him cheap beef in a rented room, while Dulsie looked for a business more profitable than charging sick people to watch him heal. But beef didn’t scramble for a knife. Beef didn’t surprise him. She had helped him discover what he liked and taught herself to call it stock.

“I’ll get your change of clothes,” she said.

“The soft trousers. And leave the boot open. I’ll bring the money.”

He had carried the cashbox into the lodge himself after dinner. He liked the weight of it. He’d sleep with it against his shins in the car, then ask her in the morning whether she thought they were rich.

Dulsie went through the dividing gateway and crossed the concrete of the outer yard. The cannon protruded from a wide opening in the booth’s front, to the left of an observation window. Below the window, a solid brick wall ran across to the door and its three steps. The dividing wall kept the killing pen out of Norris’s sight. He pointed at her bloody skirt, then jabbed his finger towards the door.

She climbed the steps. Norris pulled her inside and shut the door behind her. His hands smelled of the orange he’d been eating. There was half of it on the console beside the gun controls.

“What happened?”

“It got loose.” She bent over, giving herself time to breathe like a frightened woman. “The guests. I couldn’t get them out.”

“Where’s the handler?”

“Dead.”

“Shit.” He turned back to the glass. “Stay away from that door.”

Ogden emerged from the gateway carrying the soft trousers. He must have gone into the lodge to look for her. He had put on his own face again, the long nose and heavy cheeks, though the rest of him was still too big for the jacket. There was blood in the folds of the trousers.

He saw her behind the observation window and raised them in an irritated question.

“That’s it,” Dulsie said. “Shoot it.”

The gun’s first burst made her teeth strike together. Her view shook. Ogden’s raised arm came off at the shoulder. Flesh struck the dividing wall behind him. He fell on his side and rolled behind a stone trophy plinth. The trousers remained in the yard, tangled with the arm. Neither moved again.

Norris stopped firing. His chair creaked as he leaned forward. Dulsie caught one glimpse of a wet shoulder drawing skin across itself before Ogden dragged it out of sight. His familiar throat made a sound she had never heard from it.

“You can kill him?” she said.

“Yes.” Norris swallowed. “Yes, I can.”

“He’s still alive.”

Norris looked at the red drag mark, then back at her. He tried a smile.

“No need to worry, I discovered a fatal weakness: 30mm shells, launched at about 1000 m/s. About 4000 per minute should do.”

She stared at him. The little smile went. He wiped his mouth on his shoulder and returned both hands to the controls.

“Keep him in the open,” he said.

Dulsie could barely hear him through the ringing. She pulled the spare ear defenders from their hook and put them on. Norris was already wearing his. They made his face look small.

Beyond the plinth, Ogden’s back rose and fell. He didn’t have enough spare flesh to make that arm again, not quickly. He had been shot for audiences, stabbed, once run down by a drunken guest who’d panicked behind the wheel. Dulsie had always stayed beside him while he repaired himself. When he asked afterwards how bad it had looked, she told him he ought to charge more.

Now the damaged shoulder was still leaking. Norris had done that with a twitch of his hands.

The intercom buzzed. Dulsie felt it more than heard it. She raised one ear cup.

“Dulsie?”

Ogden had dragged himself to the speaker post behind the plinth. Its red call lamp shone above his remaining hand. The cannon could not reach him there.

“Turn it off,” he said.

Norris looked at her.

She pressed the button beside the window. “Stay where you are.”

“Yes. Obviously. Where have you found this cunt?”

Norris’s mouth opened. Dulsie held a finger up to him.

“Ogden, I need you to listen.”

“My arm’s out there. Look at it. That’s all gone.” His breath grated through the speaker. “Did you tell him it was me?”

“He could see what you were doing.”

“Could he? He could see through the wall?”

Norris took one ear cup off. She could feel him looking at her while Ogden breathed. She wanted to slap the button out of the panel.

“I know you hired him,” Ogden said. “Just tell him to stop. I’ll pay him.”

“She said the handler was dead,” Norris said.

Dulsie’s finger was still on the button. Ogden heard him.

“I’m her fucking husband, near enough.”

“We aren’t married,” she said, and hated herself for wasting the denial on that.

Norris pushed her hand away from the intercom.

“You two brought those people here?”

“They paid to shoot him.”

“And your attendant? The man who showed me in?”

“He wasn’t supposed to be involved.”

Norris looked towards the rear door of the booth, which led to the car park. Then he looked at the gun again. He stayed in the chair.

“Get my money,” he said.

“You’ll have it.”

“Now.”

The speaker hissed. Ogden had pressed his call button again.

“Dulsie, come on. I’ve shit myself.”

She shut her eyes. Of course he had. The soft trousers were lying beside the plinth’s shadow, and his wet breath was in this small room with her. He could turn the eating face back into the face she knew; he couldn’t spare her the rest of him.

“Go and get the box,” she told him through the intercom. “We need to pay Norris.”

“You won’t shoot?”

“No.”

“Ask him.”

She took her hand off the button and looked at Norris. He spoke into it himself.

“Bring the money.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Norris hesitated, then said, “I won’t fire while you’re getting it.”

Ogden crawled along the foot of the dividing wall and disappeared through the gateway. The lamp stayed on, carrying the scrape of his soles until he passed out of range.

“How much is in that box?” Norris asked.

“Enough to pay you.”

He rubbed a thumbnail along a split in the orange peel. “How much?”

She gave him the amount. He stopped touching the peel.

“You’ve done this before,” he said.

“It was under control before.”

He waited. She had used that tone on guests with too much drink in them, and it usually made them feel guilty for bothering her. Norris just kept waiting.

“Yes,” she said.

Ogden limped back with the box clamped under his good arm. His wounded shoulder had tightened into a hard red knob. He had pulled flesh from his cheeks and left calf to cover the damage. His trouser leg flapped around the shrunken calf, and the loose skin beneath his eyes gave him the look of someone recently starved.

He stopped behind the plinth and set the box on its flat top. His head and shoulders were visible now. Norris kept his hands still while Ogden spoke down towards the speaker.

“We’ll give him his fee. Then split the rest. Take me to the car, Dulsie.”

She could do that. Norris wanted to leave and would have his money. Ogden couldn’t drive while he was like this, so she’d drive, with the box of notes by her feet. At dawn she’d find a shop selling meat and buy enough for him to fill himself out. By the next evening his cheeks would be back and he would be holding a drink in each hand, one for her.

She held down the talk button. “I don’t want another hunt.”

“All right.”

“I mean it.”

“I said all right. We can stop.”

He turned the cashbox towards her. She had put sticking plaster around the handle where the metal pinched. His thumb kept finding the edge of the plaster and pressing it back down.

“You said you wanted somewhere with a balcony,” he said. “We can afford that now.”

He remembered which side of a bed she liked. He couldn’t use a telephone without putting it on speaker, but he remembered her headaches and the pillows that set them off. Looking at him, she felt the sick little tug of having hurt someone who had come to her expecting help. She wanted to rest her head on his chest for a minute, before he started asking her to clean something.

“Did you want him to shoot me?” Ogden asked.

She didn’t answer. Norris had stopped watching the yard; he was watching her.

“Dulsie. Did you?”

“I wanted it to stop.”

“Which bit?”

She could hear spit catching in his damaged breathing. With half the money, the balcony would be rented, and he’d be out there in his underwear eating from a packet while she dealt with the neighbours. There would always be his half, his things, his weight on the other side of the bed. She had found the lodge, filled the pen and locked the gate. All he had done was eat.

“I’m coming to the door,” she said. “Bring the box.”

He pulled the box off the plinth and started towards her.

Dulsie let go of the talk button and lowered her voice.

“When I’ve got it inside,” she told Norris. “When I’m clear.”

Norris stared at her for a moment. Then he put his ear cup back on and faced the gun.

She took off her own ear defenders and opened the door. Ogden stood at the bottom of the steps. His left knee had stiffened at the wrong angle and the trouser leg was black with shit. He lifted the box, stretching his good arm to bring it within her reach. The wrist grew thinner as the hand came up.

“Give me a hand with it.”

“Put it on the step.”

“Take the weight. It hurts.”

She bent down from the top step and took the handle with her left hand. Her right stayed against the doorframe. He held on until her fingers were properly through, as he always did when he passed her something heavy. Then he let go.

Dulsie hauled the box over the threshold. It scraped her shin. She pushed it behind her with her heel, into the booth, and turned her head towards Norris.

“Now.”

Ogden’s good hand closed around her right forearm before she could pull it off the frame. His fingers met through the flesh. The crack was small, an insultingly cheap noise for what it did to her. She tried to bring her hand towards her and it hung sideways from his fist.

“You were going to leave me out here.”

She screamed at him to let go. He dragged her down a step and she struck the frame with her shoulder. His face was so close she could see the chest hair still in his teeth.

Inside the booth the cannon moved. Ogden’s eyes went towards the barrels. He let go of her and dropped back into the yard, planting his good leg to launch himself at the gun. She had been hauling backwards against his grip; released, she fell over the box and landed beneath the observation window, behind the brick wall.

The firing started while her shoes were still in the doorway.

She lay with her smashed arm across her stomach. Her blouse filled with blood. Above her, the window shook in its frame. Through the open door she saw a piece of Ogden’s flank strike the bottom step and bounce. He made one more sound, a drawn-out vowel that stopped before she could know whether he’d been saying her name.

Norris kept firing. The ceiling light went out. Dust sifted onto her face and into her open mouth. She had both feet inside now and could not remember moving them. There was no longer any separate report from the gun, only a pressure that got inside her and made her damaged arm jerk against her stomach.

When it stopped, she was still screaming. She could feel it in her throat, though she couldn’t hear herself.

Norris came to the door. His trouser cuffs brushed her shoes. He stood there for a long time, looking down into the yard.

“Is he dead?” she said.

He didn’t turn. She kicked his ankle with her good shoe.

“Is he dead?”

He looked at her mouth, then out again. “Yes.”

She waited for the call lamp to light. It stayed dark. Below the steps lay part of his face, flattened through one eye. The rest of him was spread across the concrete in separate heaps. None of it moved. His lost arm lay where it had fallen, cooling among the ruined trousers.

Norris knelt beside her. She tried to give him instructions, but he was already pulling the booth’s first-aid bag open. He packed something against her arm and held it there. The pain changed. She vomited down her blouse, and he turned his face away without moving his hand.

“Hospital,” she said.

He nodded. For several seconds she loved him with a helpless, furious intensity. Then he shifted her left hand onto the dressing and got up to take the cashbox.

“Your fee,” she said. “Take your fee.”

He opened it on the chair. The notes were in the neat bundles she’d counted after dinner. He lifted one, felt beneath it and put it back. Then he closed the lid.

“The rest is mine.”

Norris bent to pick up his coat. She tried to stand, got as far as one knee, and fell against the wall. Her arm had become something she had to carry, and she couldn’t carry it and herself.

“Don’t fucking leave me.”

He stopped at the rear door. “Car keys.”

She pressed her left elbow against the dressing and worked her handbag open. The rings rattled in the bottom. Norris took the keys out of her fingers.

“And the bag.”

She held it against her chest. He waited. The dressing was getting slippery beneath her elbow. At last she gave him the bag as well.

“You can get more of those people?” he said.

For a moment she couldn’t connect the question to anything. He bent closer and repeated it. She understood then: the introductions, the invitation lists, the cash. Ogden was dead, and Norris was looking at the part of the business still alive on the floor.

“I need a doctor.”

“I know. Can you?”

She nodded. He reached under her good arm and pulled her up.

They went out through the rear door. The car was where she’d left it, nose towards the drive. Norris put the box behind the driver’s seat and lowered her into the passenger side. Her skirt caught on the seat runner. He tore it free without asking, and the movement sent her arm knocking against the door. She folded over it, making noises she would never have made with a customer present.

He got in beside her. She tried to tell him where the nearest hospital was. He held up a hand while he adjusted the seat. He was shorter than Ogden.

“You get people here again,” he said, loud enough for her to hear. “We don’t need him.”

There was blood running between her thighs onto the upholstery. He thought she could simply find another four rich men to walk in front of his gun. She had spent years filling tonight’s pen. But he hadn’t started the car, and the dressing was soaked through.

“Yes,” she said.

Norris turned the key. At the first bend the cashbox slid across the floor, and Dulsie reached back to stop it with the hand that no longer worked.