Lord of Order by Brett Riley (the reading list book TXT) 📕

Bushrod yanked the guard to his feet and shoved him up the hill. The other Troublers followed. Stransky stayed behind with Troy. When the others passed out of hearing, he said, This part tastes bad in my mouth.

You can stay on the porch with the old man. No need to watch.

He shook his head. If we’re together, we’re together. I aim to see it through.

Suit yourself.

She started up the hill. Troy followed, hoping the guard would talk quickly, knowing he would not.

Ten minutes after Bushrod tied the guard to a straight-backed chair and started beating him, the man’s brown mane had turned as red as the Nile when Aaron raised his hand over it. The guard’s lips were bloated leeches, his left eye swollen shut. An egg-sized hematoma sprouted in the middle of his forehead. His chin rested on his chest. Flecks of blood spattered his clothes when he exhaled. Only the ropes held him in place.

A Troubler brought a satchel. Bushrod took out a mallet, a chisel, and a thick rope tied into a noose. He held it all up to the Crusader’s good eye.

Troy leaned against the far wall, flexing his right knee. In the by and by, I’ll pay for this. Another mark on my soul, deep and jagged like the scrawlings on a prison wall tallyin up the endless days. But he did not turn away. You had to remember. You had to carry your shame with you like stones in your pocket. If you lived long enough, maybe you could earn putting it down, one rock at a time.

Bushrod circled the guard three times, tossing the mallet into the air, catching it by the handle, tossing it again. He never missed, the sound of wood on flesh metronomic and flat. The guard’s lips moved. He was praying, but for what? Deliverance? The strength to die well? He kept silent but for his labored breathing.

Stransky knelt in front of him and pushed the hair from his face, as a lover might do. It left swaths of gore, lined like brushstrokes. When she spoke, her voice was tender. Just answer the questions, and all this will stop.

The guard said nothing. Stransky shrugged and stepped away.

Bushrod tossed the mallet into the air, caught it by the handle as it was still arcing upward, and then brought it down with all his force on the guard’s left shoulder. The man’s banshee scream overrode the sharp crack of smashed flesh and breaking bone. The guard’s head jerked upward, the cords in his neck standing out. Half a dozen startled birds flew out of a nearby tree. Stransky watched them go, her face serene. The guard grunted and moaned through clenched teeth. Nearby, two trees stood on the hill like sentries, an improbable tire swing hanging from the cedar, perhaps a gift from some Troubler father for his Troubler children. Diagonal slats of light shone through the branches, which the breeze sent swaying, the sun’s rays kaleidoscoping, hypnotic. The guard’s breath sounded heavy and wet, as if Bushrod had driven his clavicle straight into a lung. The arm hung lower than any arm should. The divot in the shoulder looked deep enough to hold water.

Let’s try that again, honey, said Stransky. She might have been asking him inside for coffee. Remember you got a whole shitload of bones. Where are your people deployed? How many on the ordnance?

The guard watched her, his nostrils flaring like a blown horse’s.

Bushrod raised the mallet with both hands and brought it down on the other shoulder. The guard fell over, chair and all, and screamed, guttural and animalistic. A deranged prophet of doom risen from time’s most fetid pools. He clenched his teeth hard enough to shatter them, white flecks on the scarlet staining his shirt. Blood gushed from his mouth. Bushrod took up the chisel. He sat on the guard’s upper arm, grinding the crushed bones together, and set the chisel against the man’s hip. Then he brought the mallet down again and again and again, metal thudding on metal like someone staking a tent. The guard shrieked, his voice hoarsening. He tried to buck Bushrod off, but the Troubler held his seat and kept pounding, as merciless and implacable as ocean waves on rock, until the tip drove through clothes and flesh alike, blood spurting and pooling beneath them as if Bushrod had been drilling for it. By the time the hipbone shattered, the guard had already passed out.

Bushrod stood as Stransky retrieved a dipperful of water from the rain barrel. She doused the guard, who awoke sputtering and screaming as if he had never ceased. Stransky squatted and peered into his cheese-colored face. Talk, she said.

Bushrod knelt and fit the chisel against the guard’s knee.

No, he said, and then he burst into tears.

Stransky turned to Bushrod and nodded. The big man got up and stepped back with the others, watching, listening. Stransky stroked the guard’s bloody cheek. All right, she said. Tell me.

The guard looked as if he wanted to die. He likely did.

Pickets of twenty-five and a cache of explosives every half mile along the lakefront, he croaked. And every quarter mile on Lakeshore Drive. Same number every half mile along the river levees. Fifty guards and more explosives on the east side of the 17th Street Canal. Fifty on the Industrial Canal—twenty-five on the northeast side, where it meets the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, twenty-five on the southeast between Florida Avenue and Claiborne. Fifty on the east side of the London Avenue Canal. Posts on street corners every three blocks. Six to a dozen troops at every one.

Do they ever stand down?

Never, the guard said, spitting blood. His teeth looked like jagged icicles. There are rumors, though.

What kind? She daubed at his lips with her shirt hem.

When the wall’s done, he said. Some say Mister Royster will call us all there to witness its completion and celebrate the Lord’s victory over you