Who are they?
This from Darlene. She was still standing in the cab, wrapped in shadow, afraid to come any closer.
How to explain?
He couldn’t.
Just some old friends, he lied, and Darlene rebuked him with the firm declaration of a parent catching her son doing the same.
Well they sure don’t look like old friends to me!
32
Facing another door, all those years ago, men who maybe wanted to kill him on the other side too, he’d heard Evers calling down to him from the stairs.
Dad, what’s going on?
He was standing on the top step, rubbing sleep from his eyes. He was wearing a T-shirt loosely hung over his boney lank and had a curtain of hair almost as long as Millie’s draped over that. Gerald couldn’t see his face and couldn’t tell of his expression but he imagined it must be the mirror image of his mother’s when she’d called after him, only moments before. He hadn’t looked back at her then but saw her reflection in the boy now and felt treble the terrible pang his love had wrought, for the boy’s love for her was even greater than his own.
Evers had taken a cautious step down.
Dad? he asked, halting his descent and stooping over, prying at the dark as if he’d seen something on the floor but couldn’t yet tell what it was.
Gerald’s mouth opening and words forming in its aperture though he had no idea what they’d amount to until he was yelling, Stay there! Don’t you come down here!
The boy heedless. Taking another step and then another, Gerald helpless but to watch as the grim awakening stalled the boy’s descent. Daisy had wandered to Millie and was licking at her wound as she often did when one of her family had cut themselves and he was helpless to do anything about that either. All of a sudden the dog’s head snapped towards the door and she let out a low growl an instant before a shock of bright blanched the room. Millie then revealed before them: the dim cast to her eyes, the bloom of blood on her chest, the palm of her hand upturned on the floor as if beseeching alms for the dead.
The boy screaming, Mom!, and the light from the driveway fleeing like it had never been. Daisy barking mad at the door and Gerald spinning to the window beside it. A hole in the glass at about chest level, shards arrayed around it, like a child’s drawing of the sun. And beyond: the crimson glow of taillights at the back of a pick-up truck, two men framed ghastly within. One was leaning back against the open tailgate — Ellis Wilkes! — and the other — his older brother, Wade — was bending to lift one of Ellis’s legs, its ankle caught within the bear trap’s sharply toothed grin.
A rage overcoming Gerald then as he’d never felt before, his foot like it was spring-loaded kicking at the door, its frame shattering. He’d come out onto the porch gun a-blazing, sighting first on the man in the pick-up’s driver’s seat, shooting at him three times and him pitching sideways so Gerald knew his aim had been true, turning the gun then on Wade at the tailgate. Wade was already pivoting towards him, a sidearm in his hand, pointing it at Gerald as he came to the porch steps. Gerald pulled the revolver’s trigger twice, hitting Wade once in the shoulder, the second in the neck. The other fired wild, the shot sparking off the cab’s roof, and then Wade dropped like his legs had turned to water, Ellis flailing too, lurching off the tailgate, hitting the ground and clawing himself away from the truck.
The bear trap on his leg was like an anchor dragging behind so he’d barely made it more than a few feet by the time Gerald was stepping into the taillight’s crimson glow. By then Ellis was lying on his back with a cell phone pressed to his ear, gaping up with mortal fright as Gerald lowered his gun, aiming it dead centre of his forehead.
* * *
What’s going on?
This from Trent, sitting up on the table-bed.
Glancing back at him with the same horror as Gerald had towards Evers, those years ago. He’d been running from the memory of what came after ever since, and more so from the man he’d become in the nine months following that. Seeing now that becoming that man again was maybe his — and Darlene’s and Trent’s and Linda’s — only hope of making it out of this night alive. Searching out the image of Millie dead on the floor, trying to conjure again that rage. Hearing Evers screaming, Mom!, and Ellis’s pitiful whimper.
Daddy, he’s going to shoot me.
Gerald felt a twinge of something at last and pushed the door open. The wind wrenched it from his grasp, slamming it with a resounding bang! Taking the first step down the stairs like the ground was all thin ice ahead.
He’th got a knife, Zip was saying as he came out from under the awning. Watch yourthelf!
Zip was pantomiming a mawkish display of dire concern starkly at odds with the triangle of metal affixed to the stick in Gerald’s lowered right hand, scurrying away as if he meant to seek cover behind the two men sitting in lawn chairs at the path’s edge. Gerald recognized both of them right away. The one on the left was the cadaverous man who’d been guarding the barbecued pig on the night of the prison break and the one on the right was none other than Mathew Del Papa. Junior was holding a cigar to his mouth, flits of its ember trailing off its cherry like a comet’s tail blowing in the wind, and Senior was resting on the stock of a machine gun propped in his lap. He nodded to Gerald like he always did whenever they’d passed each other in the unit’s common area — a sign of grudging or mutual respect — and Gerald played along by nodding back.
Zip had since dispensed with his pantomime and was walking towards him, his rifle pointed at Gerald’s knee caps and his finger itching on the trigger but it wasn’t upon him that Gerald’s attention had settled. It was the grim rider. He could now see that the man had what appeared to be sharpened bones pierced through each of his pectoral muscles. They looked to Gerald like human ribs. Trickles of blood resembling a red river winding through a desert leaked from the wounds on either side of them.
I don’t think you’ve met my friend, Zip was saying and Gerald looked back at him. He wuth hoping you’d drop by. When you never thowed, figured we might ath well pay you a vithit. Then looking back at the grim rider. Well ain’t you gonna thay hi, Ed.
Ed gave a grunt which served him just as well as any hello and then Zip was speaking again.
Ed don’t talk much. But take it from me, he wuth real keen on meeting you after I told him how you’d killed that bear, what wuth it, with your bare handth?
He was looking at Gerald like he expected him to contest the point and Gerald gave his head a subtle shake, not so much because what he’d said was a lie but because he knew right then that this had nothing at all to do with Ed and everything to do with Zip. He must have been harbouring a grudge against him all those years at Central North, for the way he’d looked at him one time or maybe for the way he hadn’t another. Why he’d chosen to execute his revenge now, it was hard to say. Could have been merely a matter of convenience but looking over the men in the lawn chairs, both armed with machine guns, and the cadaverous man wearing a flak jacket spanned with a line of grenades, got him to thinking that maybe he was to be the opening act — a teaser — in advance of the main attraction.
Whatever that might have been, he doubted he’d ever live to see it.
And I believe it, I do, I do, Zip continued as if he believed no such thing. Ed here, mind you, he had hith doubth, tho I thaid, well there’th only one way to find out.
The grim rider had grown impatient with Zip’s preamble and was already striding forward. Zip stepped out of the way just in time to keep from getting trampled and then it was only Gerald and the grim rider, coming at him with the lowered head and upraised eyes of a bull about to go into a full-on charge. His arms were cocked in front of him, the knives as fearsome as any pair of claws, and he was glaring at Gerald with about the same menace as had the bear he’d killed, those five years ago, though this man was as big as a grizzly and the bear he’d killed was a much smaller b
lack.
When he’d first seen that bear, it had been raised on its hinds, towering over Evers, sprawled on his ass not five feet in front of it. Hearing Evers’s scream and the bear’s growl, he’d come hurtling out of the bush, snatching his hunting knife from its sheath and leaping over his son, hitting the bear with such force that it had staggered back. He’d grabbed a hold of it around the neck with his one free arm, and drove the blade into the bear’s eye even as its claws raked across his back and its teeth tore into his shoulder.
There wasn’t a day gone by in the five years he’d spent at Central North that he hadn’t cursed himself for his hubris. It was a word that his grandfather had often used when prognosticating about the presumed fate of humankind. He’d used it so often that Gerald had finally looked it up in the dictionary on the shelf in their living room.
This is what it had said:
Hubris n. Wanton arrogance.
And it had certainly seemed like the worst kind of arrogance going after the bear like he had. Blacks were notoriously skittish and hardly ever attacked anyone. All it likely would have taken was a yell to have scared it off but there he was, feeling invincible all over again. He’d been paying the price for it ever since but never in his wildest imaginings would it have occurred to him that his hubris would have brought him to this, facing off against a man as big as a grizzly and just as fierce, coming at Gerald like he was standing between him and his cub.
Holding his ground, Gerald cautioned himself, Don’t you be going off all half-cocked again. You only got one chance at this. You got to be smart about it!
Tightening his grip on the haft of his stick, like he was actually thinking of using it, his eyes open wide, letting the fear shine through, taking a step back then as if he meant to flee, Trent then shouting, Stop! No fighting allowed!
He was emerging from beneath the Airstream’s awning, wagging his finger. A trail of drool spanned from his chin to the collar of a sleeveless white undershirt and he was paying that as much mind as he was Darlene tugging at his arm, pulling him back. Gerald staring after them like he couldn’t bear to face his own doom, all the while keeping sight of the grim rider in his peripheral. The rider took the bait, lashing out with the blade in his right hand and Gerald only then sprung to life, lunging forward, dodging the strike even as he loosed the steak knife he’d secreted in his left hand, gripping it blade-down and driving its point into the man’s side at the height of his navel, burying it up to its hilt and carving a straight line four inches deep across his belly.
The grim rider was already lashing out with his other hand as Gerald spun around behind him, his head snapping back, trying to avoid the blade veering down, and failing that by less than a hair. The sharp edge of it nicked the corner of Gerald’s mouth and he twisted into a roll, coming out of that in a crouching squat five feet behind the other. Watching the grim rider tottering, turning to face him on unsteady feet, taking one step forward and then dropping to his knees, the knives slipping from his grasp and his hands groping for his belly, trying to stop his guts from spilling out through the gash. Gaping upwards at Gerald in muted confusion and Gerald upon him again, slashing downwards with the stick-blade, burying half of it in the grim rider’s left eye socket and snapping the rest off with a quick jerk of his hand.
The grim rider lolled sideways and Gerald bent low, snatching up one of his machete-knives and spinning back towards Zip and Pops and the cadaverous man, licking at the blood on his lip as if he was eager for a taste of more. The latter two were now on their feet and Zip was raising his gun, levelling it at Gerald’s chest. Gerald took a long and solitary breath, maybe his last. But as he exhaled, Pops was setting Senior on the gun’s barrel, pushing it back down in silent reprieve even as Junior raised a flare gun over his head.
A red ball of phosphorus leapt from its spout, lofting skywards. Gerald — and Trent and Darlene too — watched it with craning heads: a trail of burning red whisked up by the wind and streaking across the dark with the celerity of a shooting star. Trent and Darlene stared after it as it fell behind the treeline on the far side of the tracks and Gerald’s gaze alone settled back on the three Sons.
Zip was standing in their fore. He was holding his rifle propped against his thigh and he’d since pulled a black bandana tight to the white of his eyes, concealing the wreck of his face but doing nothing at all to dampen the menace in his voice.
You’re gonna wanna … run.
33
Clayton had nodded off sometime before dark.
He was roused by the hospital tent’s crossbeams rattling in the wind and the violent patter of rain pelting the roof, or it could have been his wound, itching like it was teaming with ants. He sat up scratching at his leg, raking the fingernails of both his hands on either side of the dressing as an urgent murmur of voices arose from the waiting room. He couldn’t tell what they were saying until he heard the rustle of the tent flaps leading into the examination rooms and all he heard of what followed was the older nurse asking, She bit you? Now why’d you let her go and do that?
Her tone carried the teasing reproof of a grandmother chastising a grandson for his latest misadventure and that seemed to have cowed whoever had been bit. All was quiet again except for the storm and the old man coughing from across the hall. This was broken a short time later by the pretty young nurse sticking her head in through the flaps of Clayton’s stall.
Oh, she said, you’re awake.
Hard to sleep with all the racket.
Not much I can do about that. How’s your leg?
Itching like hell.
That’s a good sign. It means it’s healing. Try not to scratch it.
It could sure use some more of that ointment.
I’ll put some on it when I change the dressing.
I’d appreciate that.
If there’s anything else—
She was already pulling her head back out.
I was wondering about my friend?
Your friend?
The one I came in with.
Oh, she said, he left.
Left? Left where?
He didn’t say.
Did he say when he was coming back?
He didn’t say much of anything. He asked if there was a back way out and I pointed him to the emergency exit.
Clayton thought on that.
You say he went out the back?
He seemed to be in a hurry about it too.
Is that right? Huh.
She shrugged as if it was the least of her worries.
Is there anything else?
Yeah, you got anything to read around here?
Read?
You know, like a book.
A book? She was looking at him like she’d never heard tell of such a thing.
Sure, why not? Don’t you read?
I read all the time. Just not … books. I thought only old people ever read books anymore.
Ah hell, ain’t nothing better than sitting down with a good book.
She’d looked at him cockeyed.
You don’t strike me as the type.
What type is that?
The type that reads.
My dad was a big reader, he said, which was the truth. He died when I was a baby. All he left was a shelf full of books. Mom said he’d read every one of them and so I read ’em too, figured we could at least share that. I guess it kinda put me in the habit.
I’ll see what I can do.
The flat tone of her voice told him she wasn’t planning on troubling herself too much over it but a few minutes later she returned carrying a rumpled paperback.
Nurse Maddox had one, she said, holding it up. The back says it’s a mystery.
They’s my favourite.
In truth he preferred true crime but it earned him a sprightly smile as she set it on the bed and that was we
ll worth the lie.
It wasn’t much as mysteries went, a simple paint-by-numbers written by some old lady who didn’t seem to have ever met a criminal and yet was hailed on the back as one of this century’s greatest crime writers. He’d got to muttering, Bullshit, every time one of her ex-cons did or said something that no one he’d met at Central North would have ever been caught dead saying or doing. When he was almost halfway through the nurse popped her head through the flap again, this time asking with a look of genuine concern, You okay?
Fine, he answered. I’m right as rain.
How’s the book?
It’s a good’un.
I’m glad to hear.
The old man set to coughing again, his virulent hack degenerating into a gasping wheeze, and the old woman called out, Nurse! Nurse!
Duty calls, the nurse said, offering him an apologetic smile as if she’d like nothing better than to stand around chit-chatting.
Maybe she’s warming to you after all, he thought and that giving him a measure of hope, albeit slight, as he returned to the book, doing his best to keep his muttered, Bullshit!s, to himself as he read on. When he’d got to within four chapters of the end he made a nickel bet that it was the partner who’d killed the cop who’d been shot in the first chapter, though he’d have been plenty disappointed if that’s the way it turned out, preferring mysteries, true crime or otherwise, to keep him guessing to the last page and always hoping for the bad guy to somehow turn out to be not so bad after all. And the partner was plenty bad, unlike any cop he’d ever met, but he had to admit, if grudgingly so, bearing at least a passing resemblance to more than a few of the inmates at Central North, most of whom couldn’t seem to think more than a second or two into the future, living in an ever-present, at mercy to their every whim, and who could turn violent at the slightest provocation, the same as the partner in the book.
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