Bookkeeper v. Bookseller

Anxious, sticking close to the oak, the Bookkeeper tugs at the corners of his patchy black mustache. He plucks a hair, takes it between his teeth and gently nibbles, bit by bit, until eaten.

It's a beautiful bright day. Cool but windless. Sparrows trill cheerfully on boughs above the Bookkeeper. The creek murmurs in the distance. At some point a deer steps carefully from the forest. She spots the Bookkeeper, pauses, then steps back behind the dark veil of brush.

Spring - in all its glorious promise!

The Bookkeeper plucks and eats another hair.

The Bookseller, flannel jacket draped over the crook of his arm, paperback in his back pocket, walks curtly from the road. He pauses on sight of the piled corpses - confronting the nauseating odor he smelled from far down road - then continues.

The Bookseller face is wan, oval, slightly creased. It wears (from habit) an expression of disinterest. His glasses aren't much more than functional, his watch is digital, his chin beveled.

Why aren't these people buried? he asks.

I didn't ask to come here at all so how should I know?

I'm not accusing you.

The Bookkeeper tugs at his mustache.

The Bookseller shakes his head. He turns his back to the Bookkeeper, looks out to the northeast. He speaks (less to the Bookkeeper than himself) guessing that it'd take a steam shovel hours just to dig a pit wide enough to fit everyone. He speaks more in the same vein for some time. The Bookkeeper is silent.

Then they're both silent.

Then the Bookkeeper speaks, words torrential:

If you ask me personally this entire ordeal is a joke the way whoever set it up set it up. I've never a mess like this in my life and I work in a store thats owner thinks its okay to just shove things everywhere so there's lamps and lights and things on the ground and on shelves and everywhere without rhyme or reason so that nobody would know where to look for what if their life depended on it, and how we stay in business is anyone's guess, but I think it has something to do with organized crime.

The Bookseller turns around and faces the Bookkeeper. The Bookkeeper looks away. The Bookseller turns back.

Another silence.

Then, again, the Bookkeeper:

On weekends I collect banners and promotional advertising from supermarkets. But just the ones for specials on pork and beef. Sometimes lamb, but definitely not chicken. They'll just throw that stuff out anyway and they'll let you have it. All you have to do is ask - but not many people know that. Do you have a hobby?

The Bookseller puts his hands to his hips. He turns. Should we...? he asks, motioning toward the pistols.

But you didn't answer the question, says the Bookkeeper accusingly.

I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

The Bookkeeper takes a gun and walks out to the field. The Bookseller inhales deeply, takes the other gun, and follows him. They both stand ten paces apart.

They raise their guns. Their guns go off.

Bodyguard v. Bookkeeper

More should be said about the Bodyguard.

In his junior year of college, mainly to escape the boredom of his state school abroad program, but also on coaxing from a band of Parisian scoundrels looking for a laugh at the expense of his semi-rural midwestern naiveté, he signed a contract with the French Foreign Legion.

After enduring six months of training, where daily beatings were administered depending on one's proficiency in French, he - who previously showed seemingly insurmountable trouble conjugating verbs as easy as déconfire, souffrir, and mourir - became fluent. And hardened. Thus fluent and hardened, he was shipped off to patrol the Maroni River on the border of Guyane, then to guard a strip of desert in Obock province in northern Djibouti, then to battle in the equatorial grasslands of Côte d'Ivoire.

After three years of fighting in Côte d'Ivoire he grew tired and so, buying passage aboard a Cypriot tramp freighter bound for Charleston Bay, deserted.

Repatriated, he changed his Euros and sold his uniform and metals and bought a bus ticket to Hoboken. There he found work as a bouncer. Then, after a year of bouncing, he signed with an agency that assigned him to guard the body of a once-famous female Singer.

Now he drags the body of the Bishop and dumps his body on the ashes of the pyre.

The Bookkeeper arrives.

Here's what should be said of the Bookkeeper:

After passing a correspondence course in accounting, he took a job at a discount lamp outlet.

The two men greet. After the Bookkeeper vomits on sight of the bodies and the smell, and the Bodyguard drags the body Bodybuilder and the Biomedical Scientist to lie next to the Bishop on the pyre - all while trying to keep from inhaling the fumes from the pile of worm-ridden bodies by the fence, now peppered with newborn flies - the two men chose their weapons, take the field, and stand ten paces apart.

They raise their guns. Their guns go off.