Last Call for the Living (22 page)

The notion gave him pause.

… disappear down the mountain. Right now. Cut the distance to the clearing where the old foundation was. Grab the money. Get to the truck and make for the highway …

He could see the iron stove in his mind, the hemlocks around it arranged like headstones. If he measured his steps, kept his bearings, he knew he could find it in the darkness.

… wasn't that far. Get cleaned up in a bathroom somewhere. Change clothes. Stay the night in some exit-ramp motel where the curtains smell like the fur on a dead dog. Lay low forever and hope you never run across an ex-con hip to an old hit list …

Men with ties to the Brotherhood were everywhere. They laid courses for brick and mortar. Worked construction. Repaired motorcycles. Hung around dingy tattoo parlors. They seeped into bars and pool halls, looking for action, looking for scores, looking around. They lived in trailers and run-down apartments. Houses with no mailboxes. In compounds where flags of hate flew.

A few lived in cars, cooking meth in the console.

But ten grand for his head?
Big motherfucker. You'll know 'im when you see him.

Word would get around. Even the blacks and Hispanic streetside bangers might get in on the hunt.

In his world the grudges and headhunts ran forever. His name would equal blood. He would have to live in the zone for the rest of his life. Because going back inside wasn't even an option. He wasn't a snitch about to rely on protective custody.

You don't need anything inside that cottage anyway.

Walk. Walk away.

Cut and run, you damn fool.

This ain't like you.…

He heard Charlie grunt as if he'd been kicked.

Hicklin rose and approached the tree line. He froze in a gasp of hesitation, thinking on what he was about to do.

No, man. No. It ain't right. Ain't smart. You know better than this.

The front door of the cottage looked like an open elevator shaft waiting for someone to fall in. The moon appeared briefly from behind a tanker of white clouds.

He laid down the shotgun and unholstered the .45, tossing it to the ground. He announced himself and waited for Lipscomb's reply.

It was Charlie who came out first, a gun pressed to the back of his head.

 

Run down river, river run down, run down river, river run down.

Kneel down brother, brother kneel down, Kneel down brother.

Better kneel on down.

 

TEN

The guitar player
wore suspenders and a cotton dress shirt buttoned to the Adam's apple. He strummed a chord on the cheap electric. An angular riff that seemed to be in search of a tempo. The music filled the church. A subtle shift rippled through them all. Soon the women were raising their hands. A man, the pastor, took the pulpit. Opened the Good Book and without looking began to recite Scripture. The pastor spoke evenly at first. But his tongue soon filled with excitement. Sweat dripped from his forehead and chin. And then the alpha and omega overcame him.

I grew antlers once and it cost me my job, he said.

Cost me my job with the Lord Jesus and to fall out of favor with that boss spells doom any which way ye sell it!

They said amen.

One boss. Any others? Don't wash with the Lord!

They said amen, the word falling from their lips in succession. The pastor punched the Bible with his right hand and shouted that it was the only book and the only church and the only Son kingdom come and he was only setting the stage for the next witness.

He read more Scripture. It was in English, but eventually his words slipped into the indecipherable. He stomped his feet and spoke of Jesus and Jesus alone and how the scalded dogs that were the devil's army would find no comfort in their kingdom. And the congregants reacted with more “amens” and “hallelujahs.”

It was as though some sweet liquor had been passed among them. He shouted that the Holy Spirit was there and ready to grow antlers for mankind and cast down all the serpents. The holy-rolling ecstasy spread among all the congregants. Sweat pumped from their pores. The pastor's voice filled the room like a firecracker. The guitar player matched his intensity, strumming more chords, an upbeat rendition of “The Holy Ghost Bites the Most.” Some women broke out in song. The lyrics strangled and coughed up while others swayed silently in their seats, teeth clenched, hands raised in submission.

The pastor put the Bible down and stepped off the stage. Others rose and approached the pulpit to bear witness. The guitar player strained his fingers along the neck of the instrument. A twangy hymn took form. The next speaker walked past the wooden boxes. He twirled on his toes, hands held high above his head.

Eyes closed and ears deaf to the rattles emanating from within.

*   *   *

“That you, Hicklin?”
Lipscomb said from the depths of the cottage.

“Who else might it be?”

He was suddenly blinded by a brilliant beam. A tactical light trained on his face. Hicklin squinted, raising both hands to shield his eyes as if the light were strong enough to knock him over.

“Toss that knife now,” Lipscomb said.

Hicklin reached behind his back and produced the knife, holding it up briefly as if for inspection. Then he chucked it.

“Bet you didn't think I had this, huh?” Lipscomb said with a twitch of the tactical light. “Us sittin' in the dark here like a couple of border monkeys.”

Lipscomb had made Charlie strip off his clothes. He stood wearing a look of shame, naked and trembling, hands covering his crotch. Hicklin's heart sank. His organs pulling at it with hooks and chains.

“Let the man put on some clothes,” he said.

“
Man?
You sure are sweet on this bank teller, ain't ye?”

“You can shoot us both right now,” Hicklin said. “I won't move a goddamn muscle.”

“We'll see about that.”

They sparred eyes, Lipscomb realizing his protégé's threat was far from empty. Lipscomb played the light off Charlie, looking him up and down as if amused by some sculpture he'd chiseled. He kept the HK pointed at Hicklin when he produced a pair of handcuffs from his belt.

“Well, I reckon stripping the man of his clothes
was
a bit much,” he conceded. He gestured with the tac light. “But first I want you on the ground. Cuff up. You know the drill.”

Hicklin took a step back and lay on the ground as asked. A moth landed on his cheek, fluttered its wings and launched toward the light. Lipscomb turned and kicked Charlie toward the cottage.

“Get you that shirt and pants you was wearing, bank teller,” he said, adding, “and hurry it up. I got a low tolerance for boredom.”

*   *   *

As Charlie searched
in the darkness for his pants and shoes, his bare foot kicked something hard on the floor. He knelt, his hand finding a .357 Taurus snub nose, the same revolver Flock had worn in the small of his back. It must have fallen out during all the shooting. Charlie glanced at Lipscomb.

He's not even watching you, Charlie. And he doesn't know what you're capable of.…

*   *   *

Lang was lost.
He played the dying flashlight over twisted roots, disoriented, the woods on that part of the mountain like a city where all the streets appeared the same.

He clicked off the flashlight and stood in absolute darkness. Black as a deep sleep. The forest a pillow smothering his breath.

He shook off a surge of panic and lit another cigarette. Lang smoked quietly, blind to everything but the smoldering tip of his Marlboro. It was exciting to be so still, deprived of half his senses. But a part of him wanted to scream.

Just stay here. Stay here and fossilize. Years would pass. Then the hunters would find you. A petrified man. Meshed with the wood.

Like some rascal born from the trees and eventually reclaimed.

Back near the creek he recognized the odor of decay before coming across a wild boar. A sow no less, dead maybe a week. With the flashlight he could see through the skin, thin as paper, the maggots and beetles undulating beneath the surface. She wasn't a large animal compared to some of the boars he'd heard about in those mountains—sounders with individual boars rumored to be as big as riding mowers. The mother didn't look to have been shot, either. Lang figured the sow died giving birth.

Not far away were the remains of the boar's piglets.

Out here anything could happen.

Sometimes things just died. They don't always need a reason.…

He thought about two boys from over in Fannin County. They had been driving back from a night at Kalamity's bar, both drunker than shit. The passenger, a kid about twenty-three years old, stuck his head out the window to puke, just as the car drifted toward the shoulder, passing the solid steel cable of a terminal down guy.

Took his head clean off.

His buddy kept driving. Didn't even notice, as drunk as he was. Went on home without bothering to look over at his pal's corpse. He left the car in the driveway, stumbled inside his house and passed out in his bed. Five quarts of blood leaking all over the passenger seat of his car. A little girl walking her dog found his friend the next morning. Nothing but a giant tongue and some spine where the head used to be. They'd found his head about a mile down the road in a drainage ditch. A murder of crows marking the spot.

Lang dropped the cigarette and stepped on it, suddenly angry at himself and not knowing why. He was trying to remember the name of that decapitated boy.

Lang listened to the rain finding passage down through the canopy. He hoped for a little more gunfire now.

So that he might find a way out.

*   *   *

Lipscomb watched as
Hicklin—following instructions—cuffed his right wrist to Charlie's left. Lipscomb offered a slight gesture, as if honored by their company, and they marched into the woods. Hicklin knew once they walked out into that clearing and saw the spilled chimney, the iron stove, the duffel bag …

It would be all over.

Lipscomb would calmly raise his weapon and shoot them both in the head. All the play had gone out of his eyes, Hicklin noticed. His mentor had taken on the look of a man who'd exorcized whatever betrayal and nostalgia he'd felt and was now yearning only for usefulness and results.

He kept the light trained just ahead of Hicklin, hanging back about five yards, the Heckler & Koch he fancied ready to fire from all manner of defensive positions.

Lipscomb had left
almost
nothing to chance.

They trod carefully over pine windfalls and sodden earth, eventually arriving at a stream,
the
stream. Hicklin led them east along the bank. Instead of scaling the rock, which would have taken them to the money, he hiked upslope into the forest again.

He turned once to look back at Lipscomb. The tactical light met Hicklin, blinding as the sun emerging from a total eclipse. He figured he had five more minutes before Lipscomb began to ask questions. If he could just get in close enough, make a move for Lipscomb's knife. Or close the distance and get at the .45 without putting Charlie in danger. Ram his forehead into Lipscomb's mouth and take him to the ground. Crush his nose with the thrust of a palm. With Charlie as deadweight he'd only get one shot.

Lipscomb needed him if he wanted an easy way to the cash. But that wasn't enough leverage to swing a deal. He knew any more stonewalling would result in Lipscomb getting violent. He'd torture and kill them both. And when the heat died down he'd spend a month scouring the woods.

Hicklin trudged forward, Charlie struggling to keep up. They made eye contact once, Charlie looking sickly and exhausted. He wanted to say something, anything, but the right words never materialized.

Lipscomb holstered his pistol and unslung the shotgun, prodding them in the back with the muzzle as if they needed reminding he was there.

*   *   *

Hicklin recalled memories
of the time he and Lipscomb served together. They would walk the track of the prison yard, always moving, because when they were walking people knew to leave them alone. The cell houses at the north end of the facility rose up like slabs of chalk, a water tower beyond the wall, what Hicklin thought must have been miles of concertina wire. He remembered the noise from the textile mill, the yard always bustling, convicts moved here and there, penitentiary escorts crossing the yard with their special human cargo. Sharpshooters eyeballed the proceedings from their perches up in the gun towers. But it was Hicklin and Lipscomb's block of the yard. When they hit the end of the track they would turn back and walk it down again, always talking, always moving, always scheming.

Most of the time Lipscomb prattled on about things that mattered to him. Personal loyalty, race as an obsession they all had to succumb to. How he wanted to do more than abuse glue sniffers and peckerwoods. How he could never tolerate a traitor.

His musings ran rampant.

But he captured every convict's attention. Every youngblood. Every fish.

They flocked to him and he either worked them over or signed them on.

But he only confided in Hicklin.

Crystal meth and heroin. The ongoing war with the blacks and Latinos. So-and-so in Marion planning a hit on a federal judge. The home address of that one nigger detective who was constantly rousting some of their mules. The commissary not carrying Dr Pepper and Reese's Pieces.
The yard won't be dry much longer,
Lipscomb was fond of saying after a shipment of OxyContin or dope.

Hicklin remembered dark nights filled with the chorus of white convicts. Honeycombed cell blocks. Voices bouncing off the steel doors and studded rivets.