Mr. Clarinet

"Come on. You know."

Saggar sobbed but didn't answer.

"You know I know. I looked it up," Paul said. "I just want to hear you say it."

"D-d-d-death."

"Sorry?"

"Death penalty."

"So rape is judged so extreme a crime in your country it's punishable by death, but you think it's OK here? Is that it?"

"You said dere is no justice here."

"Only among Haitians. You see, this is our country. Not yours. You can't come over here and treat us like this. Not without consequences. And I am those consequences."

"My men just vanted to have zome fun. Dey not mean to hurt de girl."

"Try explaining that to her, will you? Do you know you bastards didn't just ruin her face forever, you ruptured her spine, so she'll never be able to walk properly again? She won't be able to carry anything on her back. Women carry everything in this country. So she's as good as dead when she grows up. You ruined her life. You might as well have killed her," Paul said.

Saggar's face was shiny with tears.

Paul pointed to the right. "Go and stand over there." Saggar stumbled forward. "Stop. Stay." One of Paul's men trained a rifle on the captain's head.

Paul went up to the Bangladeshis and grabbed one of them by the arm. He inspected his hand and then jerked him out of the line. The soldier didn't have time to move his feet. His legs went limp and Paul dragged him along the ground by his shirtfront and stood him up where Saggar had been.

"What's your name?"

"Sanjay Veja!" the soldier shouted. He was the only bald and clean-shaven man in the group.

"She bit your finger so you broke her face with your rifle. You were the first one in. The one who hurt her the most. Do you have anything to say to that?"

"No," Veja said.

"Take off your trousers."

"V-vat?"

"Your trousers," Paul pointed and repeated slowly, "Take—them—off."

Veja looked at his fellow soldiers. None of them looked back at him. He complied. Paul stepped away from him and began rummaging on the ground, picking up, weighing, and rejecting rocks until he found what he wanted—two large, flat, smooth ones that he just about got his huge hands around.

"And your underwear. That too," Paul said, without turning around.

After another look back at his comrades in arms, Veja timidly stepped out of his white boxers.

Paul went up to him, arms behind his back.

"Hold up your dick." Paul looked to make sure he'd complied. "Now stand at ease."

Max watched Paul lower himself into a tensed-up catcher's crouch, eye-to-eye with the soldier. He took a deep breath through his nose, and then, at the speed of a blink, he whipped his rock-holding hands around from behind his back and slammed them together on Veja's dangling scrotum. Max heard two sounds—the loud crack of the rocks impacting and, right behind it, a strained, wet pop.

The soldier's mouth dropped wide-open, as if all his jaw muscles had dissolved. His eyes pushed up out to the rims of his sockets, and every vein and artery in his skull bulged up in a network of thick, gorged knots.

Veja first screamed in an unnaturally low register. Then, as the realization of what had happened to him caught up with the pain, the scream cracked into a rush of terrible, terrifying howls, delivered in searing bursts from the pit of his soul. Max felt Veja's cries all the way down deep inside of him and wanted to puke. Some of the soldier's comrades did just that, while two fainted and the rest—including Captain Saggar—wept, whimpered, and pissed themselves.

Paul wasn't finished. He jerked his arms sharply to the left, until his elbow was in line with his neck and his whole body shook with the strain and effort. Max saw the soldier's naked right leg lifted up off the ground, his foot shaking. Paul repeated the whole motion with his right side, before bringing his arms back down and then twisting them rapidly back and forth, as if he was wringing out wet clothes.

He stopped. He gulped down air, filling and clearing his airways with great big breaths before he uttered a heavy, exhausted grunt and tore Veja's mangled scrotum from his body with a massive backward lurch. The sound of it going reminded Max of stitches popping and tight fistfuls of feathers being simultaneously ripped out of chickens.

Veja staggered backwards, two steps, three, one, mouth working soundlessly, throat spasming up and down, all screamed out, unable to expel any more of his immense pain. He lurched forward and then went back again.

Max saw the bloody gash in the middle of his legs, the crimson rivulets pouring down his thighs.

Veja reached for his violated crotch and touched the mush below his dick.

Paul tossed the blood-soaked rocks and flesh away.

Veja brought his bloody fingers up to his eyes, studied them closely, and then, just as his face began to crumple into tears, he keeled back and slammed into the ground, cracking his skull.

He was dead.