Bobby had spied on them for weeks now, ever since they moved into the place down the hill. He sat in the smoky, dingy dining room of his trailer home, sipped a beer and watched them through his old Navy binoculars. Little mounds of cigarette butts grew in the old peanut butter jar lids he used as ashtrays.
The woman was a babe, he thought. She looked to be about 35 or so, and in good shape. The way her butt looked in those tight jeans she always wore made him salivate. His ex-wife Arlene looked like that when they met and married, but then two kids came along and she started looking washed out and used up. After Arlene mouthed off to him once too often, he knocked out two of her teeth and she looked even worse. In fact, he thought she was so damned ugly that he didn't even care when she packed up and moved herself and the kids to her mother's in Dalton. At least that's what he screamed at her when she bounced down their rutted driveway, their kids staring at him from the back window of the rusty Ford Escort.
It always disgusted him the way the woman down the hill hung onto her husband. Her husband looked older than she was, was going bald, and had kind of a gut. But she treated him like he was some kind of movie star! Bobby couldn't believe it. One day as he watched them, her husband patted her on the butt when she bent over. Arlene would have flipped Bobby the finger if he had done that to her, but the woman down the hill turned around and kissed the guy, and grabbed his crotch!
He wasn't able to stay away from their house after that. Oh, he was careful — very careful. You couldn't be a good deer hunter without being careful, and quiet when you needed to be. And Bobby killed at least three deer every season.
He started putting on his darkest camo gear, and sneaking down to their property after dark. At first he would just sit on the little hillside opposite their window, and watch them with the binoculars. The woman liked to leave her window shades open. Most of the time it was pretty tame, but it gave him a thrill to watch them walking around, laughing, talking or whatever, and not even know he was there. He was like some sort of god, watching from on high, and he reveled in it.
But one night he saw her walk by the window in a piece of lingerie — some sort of clingy, black-lace number, that didn't hide a single damn thing. That drove him crazy, and he almost went blind that night trying to get another glimpse of her. All he got for his troubles, though, was a good view of her husband, potbelly and all, walking naked into their kitchen.
Bobby saw an advertisement in one of his hunting magazines for this thing called "The Hunter's Ear". The ad said, "Hear the step of a fox in the leaves, the sound of a deer slipping through the woods! Our amazing electronic breakthrough is..." and he stopped, a faraway look in his eyes. What if he could not only see, but hear what was going on? It only took him a minute to decide, and he ordered one over the phone. They even had a toll-free number.
Bobby couldn't wait for it to arrive, and he fantasized about what he might hear. He had heard them call for each other when they were working in the yard, and he wondered what they might say to each other when they weren't yelling for one or the other to "bring over a pruning saw, will you, Lydia?" or "Jack, will you help me hold this thing in place?"
He didn't return for any late-night observation sessions yet. He didn't want to go back until he had his magic listening machine. In his imagination it became a wonderful James Bond sort of gadget that pulled in sounds from halfway across the county, and amplified the whispered secrets of lovers through solid brick walls. He sat and looked at the advertisement, dreaming of what he might hear.
Finally, it arrived. The cardboard box couldn't stand up to his US Marine Corps fighting knife (only $11.95, plus S&H, from Soldiers of Fortune Supplies, Inc.), and soon he held The Hunter's Ear in his sweating, nicotine-stained hands. It was sort of light, not heavy the way he expected it to be. It was made of gray and blue plastic, and the instructions said he needed to install four "AA" batteries (not included). A raid of the remotes in the living room produced four batteries that had enough juice to make the "Power" light give off a heartening red glow.
Trembling with anticipation, he stepped outside and aimed the device at the dog pen down at the back part of his property. He was rewarded with a scratchy but much amplified sound of one of the dogs whining and rattling its collar as it moved. Yes! This was going to be GREAT! But he wanted to have the maximum amplification, so he made a special trip into town to buy a new pack of batteries — just to be sure.
That night, he stole down the hillside and crept through the woods to the slope that faced their windows. He focused his binoculars, and saw that the two of them were getting ready for bed. Jack was in some kind of sleeping shorts, but Lydia — oh, man! She started out in what looked like a red lace bodysuit, and then she let Jack peel it off her, kissing his way down her body as he did so. Damn! How did an old fat guy like that get to be with such a great looking woman? Why did HE get stuck being alone in his trailer, and this bastard got to make love to her? He was so furious, and at the same time so turned on, that he almost forgot The Hunter's Ear.
But he remembered and snatched it up, pulling the earphones down over his camo stalking cap. He fumbled with the switch, turned it on, and held it by its gunlike handle. He pointed the business end of it at the illuminated window, looking for all the world like he was pointing a miniature satellite TV dish at them.
Bobby almost stopped breathing, he was listening so intently. At first there was nothing, then he twisted the volume knob on the side of the device. Instantly, he heard Jack’s voice and then Lydia’s laughter, floating out through the window screen.
"Honey, you have to be the most beautiful thing I've ever seen!" Jack ran his hands up and down Lydia’s sides, as he looked her over. "I can't believe how lucky I am!"
She laughed again, and shook her head, her blond hair bouncing around her face. "Lover, you know I'm just an old lady." But at the same time, she smiled at him, and preened a little, arching her back and running her hands lightly down her sides, and then up to cup her breasts. Bobby's mouth was open, and he almost dropped the Hunter's Ear, his hands trembled so badly.
Jack leaned forward and down and kissed her, and then looked her in the eyes. "Well, if you're an old lady, I know a lot of old men who'd like to meet you!" He grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her around, pointing her toward the bedroom door. "Now you get in there, and we'll finish what we started!" Lydia giggled, gave her backside a little shake and headed into the other room. Jack followed her closely.
But that was all Bobby heard that night. Once the two of them left the front room and went into what he supposed was the bedroom, the sound became so muffled even the magic of the Hunter's Ear wouldn’t help to make it audible. He turned the volume up as far as the little knob would twist, and when he still couldn't hear, Bobby angrily turned it a little more. There was a sort of snapping sound, and suddenly the volume knob spun freely in his fingers. "Crap," he muttered. The lights went out over in Jack and Lydia's windows, and Bobby decided it was time to go home.
Bobby packed up his Hunter's Ear and binoculars in the black gym bag he had bought just for this purpose, and crept silently up and around the hillside to his place. He spent about an hour that night tinkering with the volume control on the Hunter's Ear, but it was no dice. The shaft of the volume-control knob was broken inside it. He decided he'd pack it up and send it back tomorrow, with a letter complaining that it hadn't worked when he got it.
At the end of his shift the next day at Shively Textiles, the foreman came up to Bobby with a sad look on his face. He took a yellow envelope from a sheaf of them he was carrying in his hand and gave it to Bobby.
"What's this?" Bobby looked down at the yellow envelope, afraid of the answer to his question.
The foreman sighed. "Bobby, you know things been slowin' down. It happens ever' year about this time. You didn't get laid off last year, but this year it’s your turn." The foreman tapped the yellow envelope in Bobby's hands. "There's an extra week’s pay in there, so that oughta help. You know you can go and claim unemployment in about four weeks, and you'll be brought back on in about three months, if things go the way they have for the last eight years."
Bobby was upset, but he hid it because he knew he'd survive. He had been laid off before — five times before, in fact. He even liked it at first. Lots of free time, and usually he could mooch a few free meals from his brother and his mom. But it always got a little tight by the end of the first month, before the unemployment kicked in.
On the way home that night, he stopped and bought a suitcase of Budweiser. If he was going to be short of money, he reasoned, he needed to get the beer before he ran out of cash. At home, he put most of the beer in his rusty-fronted refrigerator, kicked the door shut and took as many cans as he could carry over to the rump-sprung sofa to drink.
He slid one of his favorite videos into the VCR. It was "Commando", with Arnold Schwarzenegger. He liked all the Schwarzenegger movies, except for those two stupid ones with the little short guy — DeNutto or something like that. He could always imagine himself as Big Arnold, kicking endless butt and shooting up hundreds of rounds of ammo, without getting more than scratched.
As he watched the hero prepare himself to take on all the bad guys in the deposed South American dictator’s fortress, he grew restless. He had a lot of that gear himself, he reasoned, as he swilled down another beer, and belched. He spent almost $500 at the Army-Navy store in the nearby town in the last two years, buying web gear, camo clothing, and other stuff. An idea slowly began to take shape in his beer-fogged mind.
"Baby, do you have any of those white gladiolus bulbs left?" Jack straightened up from his work and grimaced as he called to Lydia. They were putting the finishing touches on some landscaping work that had been in progress for almost a month.
"Sorry, honey - that's the last of them," Lydia called to him. "But I've got some of the daffodil bulbs left, if you want them."
Lydia looked up at the sky. "Jack, I'm going into the house to take a shower. Supper is in the slow cooker, so we don't need to worry about that." She stood up and stretched, then removed her gardening gloves and slapped them against her slender thighs.
Jack stood up, too, and grimaced as his own thighs, not so slender, protested from crouching for so long. "Sounds like a good deal, honey. You go on in, and I'll put away all this stuff." He looked up at the rapidly darkening sky. "Man, you see those clouds rolling in? I've been feeling like it's going to rain all day today, and it looks like I wasn't wrong. That's why it's getting dark early."
She blew him a kiss. "Don't be too long, lover! I'll try not to use up all the hot water so you can have some to shower when you come in. I want you to be clean when we snuggle!" She laughed and sauntered up the steps into the house.
Jack shook his head at his departing wife, collected the trowels and weeding tools, and slowly walked them out to the storage shed. He returned, stumbling in the growing darkness over one of the new rocks they had placed around the bulb gardens that day. He gave a muffled exclamation, and bent over to pick up a rake and shovel by the corner of the house.
A large rock descended swiftly out of the darkness around the corner, and collided like a hammer with the back of his head. With a muffled grunt, Jack fell face down onto the ground, and a few of the first drops of rain spotted the back of his khaki work shirt. He didn't move.
Bobby stood there over him, breathing heavily, somewhat with the effort but more with excitement. It was the first time he had ever struck anyone other than his ex-wife or one of his kids. It gave him an immense feeling of power, to drop this guy with a single blow. Like a poleaxed steer, he thought to himself, like a damned poleaxed steer! That was one of his late daddy's favorite expressions, one his daddy had used many times as he repeatedly bragged about how he knocked out an old black man who took a parking spot he wanted.
Bobby was dressed in camo fatigue pants and an olive-drab athletic shirt. His upper torso was crisscrossed by web gear, loaded with dummy hand grenades and two different knives besides the heavy Marine combat knife in his hand. His face and arms were daubed with the camo paint he normally used when he went out hunting deer in the fall, and pale blonde hair was covered with a dark knit cap. He fancied that he would inspire terror in anyone he met.
The man at his feet, who had not had a chance to feel terrorized, was still motionless. The rain was soaking the back of Jack's shirt and plastering his thinning hair to the back of his head, where a large knot was now forming. This reminded Bobby that he, too, was getting soaked. The six or seven beers he consumed made him a little slow on the uptake about things like the rain running down his face. He wiped at his face with a forearm, smearing the camo paint.
Bobby dropped the rock he had used to attack his victim, and moved around the corner of the house with all the stealth he could muster. He could hear music playing from the front room, and smell the pungent odor of chili simmering.
With stealthy movements made ludicrous by his semi-drunken state, he crept around the deck at the front of their home, stepping on the freshly planted bulbs in their cradles of moist, freshly turned earth. His head swung back and forth, and watery blue eyes narrowed intently, seeking out any who might seek to threaten him. Another glance back at Jack showed him that he didn’t need to worry about that fat old bastard.
He stumbled as he started up the steps, and froze in the fear that he might have been heard. As he paused, his heart beating a drumroll against his ribcage, he listened intently for any other sounds. He faintly heard Lydia singing along with the music from the stereo, and the distant sound of running water. He grinned nastily. So, she was taking her shower. All the better, then. It'd be easier for him if she were already naked.
With more confidence, he moved up the steps onto the deck and froze again in panic as floodlights came on. Then he remembered how he'd seen them come on when Jack or Lydia was walking up the steps at night. They were motion detector lights. Taking a deep breath to calm himself, he slowly opened the storm door leading into the house. It didn't squeak and caterwaul like the one on his trailer. He had to hand it to Jack, he kept things up around the house. No squeaky hinges for ol' Jack, no sir. He snickered, then muffled the sound with his hand.
Once inside their home he paused a moment to get his bearings. He had seen inside their house through the window, of course, but that was different from being inside it. To the right was the front room and a short hallway leading to the master bedroom. To the left was the kitchen, dining area, and another short hallway leading, he supposed, to some extra bedrooms. He'd never really cared about those rooms. The sound of running water was coming from a door just inside the short hallway to his right.
Bobby stepped forward, and two of the dummy grenades on his web gear clanked together. Cursing under his breath, he tried to get them loose, but he had wired them on too tightly. Fumbling with the catch of the web belt, he removed it and the attached suspenders. They would get in the way for what he planned, anyway. He smirked at the thought, and then placed the whole tangle carefully over the back of the sofa near the door.
The sound of water running in the bathroom stopped, and that startled him. Damn, that was sure a short shower! He quickly headed toward the bathroom door. The excitement, the adrenaline rush, was washing the alcohol from his brain now. His thinking was clearer. With soft steps, like six months before when he stalked and killed a young doe out of season, he moved just past the bathroom door and around the corner into the bedroom, out of sight.
Lydia made a quick job of washing her hair, since Jack would need a shower, too. Reaching for a thick, furry towel, she began to pat herself dry. After wrapping herself in one towel, she stepped out of the bathroom and toward their bedroom, another towel hanging around her face like a damp curtain.
Someone grabbed her from behind, and she giggled a little. Lydia started to struggle, but suddenly relaxed and stopped fighting Bobby's grasp.
He placed his mouth up by her towel-covered head, and hissed, "Whatsamatter, honey? Ain't you scared? This ain't Jack, dammit!"
She stood there, mute, not moving at all. With another curse, he released one of her arms, and whirled her around, reaching up to jerk the wet towel from her head. Even with soaking wet hair, she still stirred him up inside
Lydia looked directly into Bobby's eyes. Her eyes went very wide, and there was a trace of fear in them, though not as much as Bobby had expected.
"Who are you? I... I thought you were my husband!" Her voice sounded uncertain, and, Bobby thought, a little excited.
Bobby laughed, a sort of croaking sound, and then asked, "Well, do I look like Jack? Huh, do I?"
Her eyes still wide, she swung her head slowly back and forth in a negative. "No! You look scary, like a soldier or something! Jack's not a soldier."
"Damn straight I don't look like that bastard! I'm not fat and half-bald like he is!"
She smiled just a little, coquettishly. "I can see you're not fat, 'cause you look real good.” She traced her fingertips over one bicep. “But how do I know you aren't bald? That silly hat covers your head!"
With a curse, Bobby jerked the knit cap from his head, and his thick, fair hair shone in the light of the lamp. He shook his head for good measure. He could see she was impressed, and unconsciously he relaxed, puffing out his chest.
"Oh, wow! Man, you DO have thick hair!” She shook her head in disbelief. "I think men with thick wavy hair like yours look so sexy!" She slightly raised her arms, and the towel around her breasts drooped a little. Bobby’s adam’s apple moved up and down as he swallowed, hard. She moved back just a little from him, and he leaned forward in reaction.
”Hey..." He swallowed again. "How come you ain't screamin’ or cryin' or nothin' like that?" His eyes narrowed. "You crazy or somethin'?"
She laughed a low, soft laugh that hinted at confidences given and secrets held back. "Hell, you’ve seen Jack! I'm married to him, but he's not what I'd call," and she ran her hands up and down Bobby's upper arms, "sexy and manly like you. I'm not crazy. I'm just..." She licked her lips and smiled. "I'm just horny." Lydia tilted her head sideways. "Where is Jack, anyway? I don't want him to catch us doing anything, you know?" Her feet slid a little to the left as she touched his arms.
The tip of Bobby's tongue darted out to moisten his lips, and under the remaining camo paint his face flushed. Damn, she was hot! And her towel just kept slipping lower and lower! "He won't bother us none. I knocked his ass out!"
Lydia’s eyes widened. "Wow! Jack's a big guy! You must be strong!" She moved a little closer. He just nodded.
"Oh, yeah..." she breathed. "I just love thick hair like yours! It really turns me on to run my fingers through it, feel it all soft and wavy..." Her hands crept up into his hair, and her fingertips were slowly caressing his ears. Bobby's eyes closed slightly, and his mouth opened, breath panting out his sour mixture of beer breath and stale cigarettes.
"Now, look," he started. Bobby swallowed, and his mouth felt dry. His fingers relaxed their grip on her upper arm. Her fingers that were caressing his ears, slid deeper into his genuinely thick but greasy hair. She smiled seductively at him, but suddenly gripped his hair with all her strength and slammed his head back into the corner of the doorjamb, dropping her towel as she did so.
The sharp edge of the molding cut him like a knife. He was relaxed, lulled into a sense of impending sex when she struck, laying his scalp open and running from the room.
He was stunned for a moment, staggering against the door and shaking his head. As he tried to pursue her, his feet became tangled in her fallen towel. That bitch! He would kill her when he caught her! He fell over a chair she jerked into his path, and plowed his face across the carpet, removing the rest of the camo paint in the process. Lydia was screaming for Jack as she went through the rest of the house, and he cursed again. She'd raise the dead if she kept that up!
Lydia was in her husband's office now, jerking open the desk drawer to get the Glock 9mm pistol he always kept there. Just as she curved her fingers around the butt of the pistol, something grabbed her hair, and snatched her away from the saving hardware in the drawer.
"You friggin' whore! You see what you done to me?" He held out a hand, where he wiped blood from the cut on the back of his head. He jerked back on her hair again, and slapped her with the bloody hand, causing her to cry out in pain. "Oh, you think that hurt, huh? Well, just wait, you little slut! Just wait 'til I..."
But he never finished the sentence. At that instant, an arm curled around his neck, clamping it in the V of the muscular forearm and bicep. He gasped, or rather tried to, but found that he couldn't. Both his hands let go of their grip on Lydia, and grabbed at the vise that was tightening around his throat. Another arm was barred across the back of his neck, effectively cutting off any escape that way, and he was lifted off the floor. His feet scrabbled on the hardwood, danced a slowing soft-shoe, and finally stopped. In less than a minute, the arms unceremoniously released Bobby, who dropped to the floor like a heavy bag of garbage.
For a few moments, the two of them stood there looking at each other. She was naked and panting, her hair a wet tangle all around her face. Jack was soaking wet from the rain, and had dirt all over his face and the front of his clothes from where Bobby left him lying in the flowerbed.
Jack reached down and rolled Bobby over onto his back. Faintly they could see that his chest was moving. Jack hadn't killed him, but only cut off his wind long enough to knock him out.
"Honey, hand me one of those sets of handcuffs from the top left drawer, will you? I knew they could come in handy some day!" Jack pointed at the location of the cuffs, and she silently complied. With understandably little concern for the comfort of the unconscious man, he tightly cuffed his hands behind him, running the cuffs through Bobby's belt at the back of his pants. Then he grabbed him by that same belt, and more-or-less dragged Bobby into the front room, followed by Lydia.
Jack stood, looking down at the unconscious man on the floor. “I bent over to pick up something, and wham! The stars came out, then the world went black." He winced as he felt the back of his head. "I came around when I heard him yelling at you, and your screaming. I saw where someone tromped all through the bulbs, and left muddy footprints up the steps. I knew that wasn't you, honey."
Lydia grabbed Jack and held to him tightly. “Honey, I was really worried, but I remembered what you told me: go along with things at first, until you can see the attacker’s weakness, then use it against him.“ She was shivering now, but she reached for the phone. "I'm calling the police, Jack. They need to come here and get this creep out of my house!"
Jack snorted. "Damn straight! Tell 'em to come and pick up the trash." He paused for a moment as she spoke with someone on the other end of the line. "Oh, and tell them to bring their own cuffs. The ones I brought with me when I took early retirement from the FBI are keepsakes, and I don’t want to lose 'em!"
On the floor, Bobby twitched. In his mind, he was chasing after a deer, but it suddenly turned around, and now it was chasing him through the woods! He dropped his rifle somewhere, and he could feel the hot breath of the big buck on his neck as he tried and tried to get away. He twitched again, whimpering.
Copyright ©2004, Tony Burton All Rights Reserved