Gun Lake (21 page)

He was gone.

They needed to be too.

THE DOOR OPENED, and the shaved head was the first thing Kurt saw from his seat. Wes actually put his hand on his belt close to the butt of his revolver, then relaxed when he realized it was Sean.

“Where’ve you been?” Wes asked him.

The door closed and Sean looked around as if mentally checking off who was present.

“Where’s Craig?” he asked.

“In the back,” Kurt said. “Asleep.”

“Somebody wake him up. We’re leaving tonight.”

Wes looked at Kurt, then at Ossie, who sat on the couch across from him, then back at Sean, who was already grabbing items from the kitchen.

“What’re you talking about?”

“I’m talking about us getting out of here.
All
of us.”

“Where’s Lonnie?” Wes asked.

Kurt shot Sean a look to see what his reaction would be, but the guy didn’t stop as he dropped cans of food in the plastic bag.

“Lonnie’s missing.”

“How?”

“Never mind. Just start packing so we can get on the road.”

“What happened?” Kurt asked, standing up.

Sean shook his head, a
not now
gesture. “Get your stuff.”

“It’s ready to go.”

“Then help Oz get his.”

“What do you mean?” Ossie asked him.

“You’re coming with us, Pops.”

“I can’t.”

“I’m not leaving you here.”

“I can’t leave,” Ossie said, his voice cracking. “I’ve got a job, Sean.”

Sean grabbed a gun tucked into his jeans and shoved it into the older man’s face.

“You’re going to leave on those two legs of yours. Unless I have to shoot them and make Wes carry you.”

“I have to give—”

“Shut up and get up. Now. Get your stuff. We have to leave.”

Ossie’s face went tight with anger, then relaxed into a kind of inscrutable dignity. He stared at Sean for long seconds, then turned and went into his bedroom. Wes followed to wake up Craig. Kurt just stood there and studied Sean.

“Did you—”

“No,” Sean answered, tying a bag together and starting to fill another.

“What happened?”

Sean cursed, then added, “He got away.”

“What do you mean he got away?”

Sean looked incredulous at Kurt’s question. “I mean, he grew a brain and figured out why I’d led him to the middle of nowhere. So he’s gone.”

“Where do you think he is?”

Sean’s face reddened and he snarled back at Kurt. “Why don’t you shut up with your questions and get going?”

“What if I—?”

A hand shot out of nowhere and seized Kurt’s throat. Fingernails dug deep into his skin, and for a second Kurt couldn’t breathe.

“What if you what? Don’t do this, Kurt. You don’t want to do this.”

As quickly as he grabbed Kurt’s throat, Sean released it and went back to picking up items and shoving them in a bag.

“Did Lonnie know anything about—”

“He knows nothing,” Sean said. “You’re the only one I’ve told. You and Oz, and both of you hate Lonnie.”

Kurt coughed. “Why Michigan? What’s over there?”

“Nothing. That’s the point. I want to disappear for a while. That’s all.”

“But nothing else?” Kurt asked.

“What do you think this is? You think I
want
to get caught?”

“I don’t know what you’re thinking. I haven’t since the beginning.”

“I don’t want to get caught,” Sean said again in a drawn-out, frustrated voice. “That’s all that should matter to you.”

“I don’t want anybody getting hurt.”

“Then help the other guys and let’s go. Lonnie’s just ignorant and mean enough to come back here wanting to settle stuff.”

THE NIGHT PASSES, and the world sleeps, and the lives are lived out, and the intersections begin to close in and tighten.

He scratches his beard and sips on the coffee and keeps the car steady, steady, not too fast and not too slow, wondering about every single passing car, questioning these directions again and why here and why now.

Her missing half is nowhere to be found. In his place, her stretched-out arm. An arm feeling nothing but a mattress, a harder mattress than her own back home, a smaller mattress and one he would have hated. She sleeps so much better with him at her side.

The woods pass and they look wonderful, and he’s driving back to her. He’s going to end this once and for all. The bottle rests, half-empty, in between his legs and tucked up against that gut he’s going to work off with no more excuses. He’s driving and going to find her and bring her home.

She sleeps in a curled-up ball, dreaming of her knight in shining white armor and reaches out to touch him and kisses his lips and sees the fire in his eyes.

The moon sends slivers of cold white light into the cottage bedroom, and he looks at the lines and the cutting blue hues over the bed frame and wonders if he’ll ever stop running and wonders if he’ll ever find grace again.

It’s getting closer, getting nearer to the end, and he knows this and nobody else does. He cannot wait for the look, cannot wait for the truth to come out. They’re riders on the storm, and he can’t wait to finally be done, for this journey to be over with.

The noise and steady hum keep him awake, and when he’s not drifting and not listening he’s praying. He prays now—prays for safety, for resolution, for an end to all this, for forgiveness, and for peace over all of them.

And he prays to make it out of this alive.

And the night passes and the world sleeps and the lives are lived out and the intersections begin to close in and tighten.

EYES CREAKED OPEN, and the first thing he saw was a wall of trees. He moved his head forward and a sharp pain raced through his neck and up into his head, which began to throb. It felt like a hammer was hitting his skull. Don wiped junk out of his eyes and then swallowed and tasted the dry cotton mouth. He realized he was in the front seat of his cruiser, then looked on the seat next to him and noticed the empty bottle of Jim Beam.

The car rested at the dead end of a dirt road. He looked back and saw the winding track curve out of sight behind trees. Don opened the car door and felt a small bit of air move in the stuffy vehicle. The back of his shirt and the seat of his pants were soaked from sweat, and he wiped more of the same from his forehead.

Standing was a chore. He stood and looked at the woods around him and tried to summon up his last memory. All he could remember was driving and listening to the radio and thinking about Collette and drinking.

Oh man
.

Swallowing again, his mouth parched with an awful aftertaste, he thought hard. Sometimes, on mornings like this, he’d have flashes, little glints of recollection from the night before.
Blackouts didn’t scare him. Sometimes they even amused him. But this one scared him. It absolutely terrified him. What had he done? Had he made it to Collette’s parents’ place? And if so, what had happened?

Something told him he had.

Work
, he thought, then realized it was Sunday and he wasn’t on duty. He’d known last night he could sleep off the unruly waves of Jim Beam.

He had a vague memory of Collette yelling, screaming. That’s all he could think of. Was that his imagination? Had they argued?

There was no memory of the boys, of anybody else. Where had they been? He just recalled her curses, her violent curses and her cries of wishing him dead. He could hear words more than he could picture her.

What’d I do?

It was a warm morning. He looked at his watch, and it said eight-thirty.

He climbed back in his car and thought again, thought hard about last night. But nothing more came to him. It was like looking at the night sky, mostly dark except for a few little specks of light. That’s what last night was to him—deathly black except those bits and pieces of Collette yelling at him, screaming at him. That was all.

The keys were in the ignition. Don turned on the car and wiggled it back around to head out of this dead-end road and back to reality, wherever that might be.

“Why do you come out here so early?” the boy asked him.

Paul smiled and glanced at Austin and acknowledged the question.

“Notice how still it is on the lake,” he told him, holding the rod out over the placid water. “This is when the fish bite the most.”

“They haven’t bit yet,” Austin said.

He was a cute blond-haired kid, the grandson of Willamae and Warren, who lived a few houses down from him. This morning as he had been heading out toward the lake with his fishing
gear, Warren had caught him and asked if his bored and eager grandson could go along. Paul didn’t particularly like the idea of babysitting and having to make small talk with a kindergartner while he fished, but he also didn’t want to say no to Warren. So Austin had tagged along and actually remained attentive to his instructions throughout the morning.

There were few other boats out on the lake, wading orphans in a giant pool. In a few hours the pool would get busier, the water more choppy, the noise louder. Had Paul been forty years younger, he would have been right out there like the rest of them, driving at high speeds and sipping beers and ogling the bikini-clad girls on the boats. But life blinks and you’re sixty-two.

“Do you fish with your grandsons?”

Paul looked through his sunglasses at the earnest boy’s question.

“No. Actually, I don’t have any grandsons.”

“Why not?”

“Just because,” Paul said after some hesitation.

“Do you have a son?”

He let out a sigh. “Never had the chance to be a father. Might’ve liked it, though.”

Paul looked down at the boy as Austin lost interest in their talk and looked out at his bobbing ball where the line and hook descended into the darkness.

He couldn’t help thinking what it would be like to be on a boat here with a son he knew, being younger and taking his teenager out to fish. Talking about life and women and making money and trying to not make mistakes.

What would he tell his son? What would a man like him possibly tell him?

I’m sorry
, Paul would say first off.

And he would be sorry for many things.

In another life, he would be that sort of man that could have that talk, who could ask for forgiveness and try to tell the bearer of his family name the facts of life—its hard, cold reality. A picture like this was merely that—a photo, an illusion. A man and his grandson on a pretty lake, leisurely letting the minutes go by.
Sharing stories, enjoying each other’s company, laughing and catching fish. In another life, the photo might be one he could hold in his hand. It might not be an illusion. But now, today, in the life he’d made and earned and deserved, it was nothing more than a passing postcard. It had no return address, no message inside, just his name and a picture of what might have been.

It was going to be a beautiful day, Paul realized. And for the moment he could pretend, pretend that he had wisdom to share and a son to share it with.

SEAN PULLED UP to a gas station named Oasis Food and Beverage and studied the parking lot for a few seconds. He got out of Ossie’s beast of a car and lit a cigarette. He could feel the back of his shirt drenched with sweat.

He gassed up the car and scrutinized everything. This bustling mini-mart stood at the intersection of two of the major roads around Gun Lake. There was a McDonald’s connected to the place, bustling with clientele getting gas for boats or beers and groceries for their week’s stay. Nobody looked concerned with anybody else.

Sean wore a cap and shades. He wasn’t too worried. This was Michigan. What in the name of all that was holy would a bunch of escaped convicts from Georgia be doing in a Michigan vacation spot? There was no reason whatsoever. None at all.

Unless, of course, someone did their homework. But they wouldn’t. Sean was pretty sure they wouldn’t dig that deep.

They had arrived at Gun Lake close to four in the morning two days ago. Sean knew that checking into a motel at this hour would have been suspicious. So they drove the cars deep into the woods and parked and slept in them—Sean, Ossie, and Wes in
Ossie’s big Chevy and Craig and Kurt in the Ford. Nobody said much, at least not Ossie and Wes.

Sean strolled into the mini-mart and grabbed a carton of cigarettes and a case of Bud. The guys would like that. Had to the keep the natives from getting restless, right? They had no clue. They would know soon enough. It was brilliant, actually, ending up here in this little-known stretch of land. A big lake and enough woods to get lost in. To simply settle down and quietly live out your life.

He picked up a local “What’s Happening” publication plus a
USA Today
to see if the Stagworth Five were mentioned. They hadn’t been mentioned in a while. But now there was Lonnie to worry about—on the loose, doing who knew what. Come to think of it, that could be good. Lonnie didn’t know where they were going, anyway, so he couldn’t give them away. And if he were spotted, maybe he would lead the law in the wrong direction.

They had ended up getting a room at the Gun Lake Motel for last night. All five of them in one room, even though they said there were only two of them. They would be there until they found something better, something less conspicuous.

Close to the Oasis checkout booth was a display full of CDs and cassettes. He browsed through them and couldn’t believe his luck. Things were going to be all right, he decided. He put the beer and cigarettes on the counter and then went back to examine the cassette from the bin. It was only five bucks.