Redemption Road

by John Hart

  She considered the unbroken forest. “There’re no signs or markers.”

  “It took seven hours for Eli’s lungs to fill with the blood that drowned him. Every word was an agony for him. I couldn’t forget them if I tried. He wanted me to find this place.”

  “Because…?”

  “Slow down,” he said. “This is it.”

  Elizabeth stopped in the center of the old road. They were thirty miles from the nearest town, deep in the woods that bled into the swamp. The place he meant was a gash in the trees beside a mound of tumbled stone and a fallen sign that was no more than a square of rusted iron. “Are you sure this is it?”

  “It fits what he told me.”

  Elizabeth didn’t like it. The track was overgrown, but not completely. At some point people used it. “What’s down there?”

  “The reason for everything.”

  Elizabeth didn’t like the answer, either. She looked up and down the empty road, then into the gloom beneath the trees, seeing shadows and vines and broadleaf plants the size of a child. The whole place felt bottomless and forgotten.

  “You’re sure about this?” Adrian nodded so Elizabeth eased onto the track, scraping through the deepest ruts before the ground smoothed enough to go faster than a walk. “How far?”

  “There’s an old mill and deep water. A mile or so, he told me. The road should end there.”

  Elizabeth pushed in; trees closed above them. “This is where he lived?”

  “Born here; lived here. His mother died in childbirth, and it was just him and his father. No electricity or plumbing. They didn’t even own a car.”

  It took a long time to cover the mile. When the track broke from the trees, it bent to an abandoned mill that stood beside the rowed teeth of a rotted dock, and water that stretched off in the mist. The mill was ancient. The roof was gone, but bits of paddle wheel remained where a creek pooled behind an impoundment, then broke white over bits of stone. Elizabeth stopped next to the building; saw moss on the wall, and moisture dripping. Adrian got out of the car, and something splashed far out in the mist.

  “He used to talk about his childhood here, about family and disappointment, the hard life of a shoeless boy.”

  Elizabeth peered into the mill. The floors were rotted out, the walls bare stone. “How long ago are we talking about?”

  “Eli was born in the shadow of the First World War, but never knew the actual date. The mill was closed when they lived here and had been since the 1800s. They were basically squatters: Eli’s father, his grandfather before that. They fished the swamp and hunted, poached cypress for the sawmills, grew some crops. There were other families around, but mostly on the low, small islands far out in the swamp.”

  “What are we doing here, Adrian?”

  But he would not be rushed. He touched the wall of the mill, took a dozen steps toward the rotted dock, and spoke with his hands pushed deep in his pockets. “You have to understand this was an old man talking, ninety or better and looking back on a hard life without phones or power or radio. He’d been decades in prison by the time we met, but could talk about this place like he’d seen it yesterday. He hated it here, you see: the heat and mosquitoes, the lonesomeness and mud and life on the water. He’d be the first to tell you he was young and arrogant and wanted better things. When he spoke of it, though, he was like a poet, the words rough and ready but just … perfect. He talked of black mud, and I could smell it. I knew what rattlesnake tasted like, having never tasted it. Same with the suckers and the gars, the catfish and the bullhead.”

  Adrian paused, and she thought he might be smiling.

  “There was a blues club twenty miles down the river, just an open-air shed, really. He’d have to hitch to get there, but there were women at the club, women and liquor and reasons to fight. Every time he’d scrounge a few dollars he’d disappear for days, then come back hungover and bruised and smelling of strange women. His father wasn’t like that. He was a hard man, practical and unforgiving. They argued about Eli’s choices, and it got violent at the end. When Eli left for the last time, he was twenty years old, broken and bloody and stripped down to nothing. You’d have to know him like I did to understand how strange that image seems. He had this stillness about him, this quiet.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because Eli came back one more time. It was sixteen years later. His father was dead or gone—he never knew for sure—but he came back that last time. Right here,” Adrian said. “Shot twice and half dead, but here for a reason.”

  “What reason?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it?” He looked at the mill, then up the length of the creek that fed it. “Let’s take a walk.”

  “Are you joking?”

  “It’s not far.”

  He set off along the creek, and Elizabeth fell in behind him. They clambered around the impoundment and circled the pool, pushing into the forest as the mist thinned and the swamp fell away. They followed the creek for half a mile, then came to a fork where two smaller streams joined at a rocky outcrop. The waterfall was not big—maybe four feet tall. That’s when Adrian told her the rest. “In 1946 Eli Lawrence was a young man living on the coast. He was a hustler, a two-bit crook, and like everyone else in that world he dreamed of the big score—him and his friends—of the one job that would put them on easy street for life. In September of that year, Eli thought he’d found it.”

  They were following the right-hand stream, the bank falling until mud sucked at their shoes. “They had inside information on an armored car running from a bank at the docks in downtown Wilmington. They knew the routes, the times. Nothing they’d ever done, though, prepared them for that kind of job. Both of Eli’s friends died in the shoot-out. One of the guards was killed. The other took three bullets, but lived. Two different bystanders were shot. It was a bloody mess.”

  “What happened to Eli?”

  “He escaped with a hundred and seventy thousand dollars, and two thirty-eight-caliber slugs in his back. He made it here without seeing a doctor. How he managed, I don’t know. The wounds were infected by then, the bullets working around where they shouldn’t. When he finally went for help, the doctor patched him up and turned him in. Eli got life without parole.”

  Elizabeth stepped across a gulley. Adrian stopped and pointed. “Does that look like an island to you?” He waded in without waiting for an answer. The water rose to his waist, and then he was out on the other side. “Are you coming?”

  Elizabeth stepped in and felt water in her boots, then higher. She pulled herself up the opposite bank, and they picked their way through brambles and scrub until they reached the center of the island and the tree that dominated it. The tree was massive. Its gnarled limbs spread out, some dipping low enough to touch the ground. Age blackened the trunk, yet it rose tall and gnarled, a giant above roots so thick they buckled the earth. “What is this place?”

  “All I know is that Eli played here as a boy.” Adrian touched the trunk and circled to the other side. “And that after sixty years in prison, it was the only place in the world he ever truly missed. Just this island. Just the tree.”

  “I’ve never seen a tree like this.”

  “He said that from the top he could see the ocean.”

  “That’s eighty miles.”

  “He wasn’t much for exaggeration. If he said he could see it, he probably could.”

  Elizabeth craned her neck but couldn’t see the tree’s crown. It rose, enormous and ancient. She tried to imagine a boy climbing it, then perching high enough to see a gleam of ocean eighty miles away.

  “What are you doing?” Elizabeth circled the tree and found Adrian on his knees, digging in a hollow spot where rot had long ago invaded the trunk. She watched him scrape in the loose soil, and it felt wrong: the place, the reason. “Please tell me this is not about stolen money.”

  “Yes and no.”

  “What does that mean?” He said nothing. “Can you just stop for a
minute?”

  Adrian rocked back on his heels. Soil stained his hands and left a smear on his face when he wiped sweat from his eyes. “It’s not about money or greed, but about the warden and the guards and a man I loved more than life itself.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “The warden came to the prison nineteen years ago. By that time, anyone who knew about Eli or the armored car was dead or forgotten. Eli was just an old man destined to die inside. He was a statistic, a number. Just like anyone else. Eight years ago that somehow changed.”

  “How?”

  “Newspaper clippings. Eli’s file. I don’t know. But, the warden figured out about the shooting and the car, and the fact no one ever found the money.” Adrian spread his hands above the hole he’d dug. “This is what Eli died for. This is why they tortured me.”

  “For money?”

  “I said it’s not about that. It’s about Eli’s life and his choices, about courage and will and a final act of defiance.”

  “Call it what you will, Adrian, your friend died for money.”

  “Because he refused to be broken.”

  “For a hundred and seventy thousand dollars.”

  “Well, that part’s not exactly true.”

  “I’m tired of riddles, Adrian.”

  “Then give me a minute.” He kept digging. When finally he stopped, he leaned in shoulders deep and heaved out a jar, dropping it with a thump. The top was rusted away, the glass smeared with dirt.

  Elizabeth pointed. “Is that…?”

  “The first of thirty.”

  She reached for the jar, but stopped short.

  “Go ahead.”

  She plucked out a single coin, smearing dirt with a thumb until it glinted yellow. “How many?”

  “Coins? Five thousand.”

  “You said he stole a hundred and seventy thousand dollars.”

  “Gold was thirty-five dollars an ounce in 1946.”

  “How much is it, now?”

  “Twelve hundred dollars, maybe.”

  “So this is…”

  “Six million,” Adrian said. “Give or take.”

  28

  Stanford Olivet let his daughter sleep in and started pancakes when he heard the shower run upstairs. It was just the two of them, and today he wanted to hold her close, spend a little time. The kitchen around him was neat and clean, a smell in the air of batter and coffee and gun oil. The .45 was beside the stove. Before that it was beside his shower, and before that, the bed. Olivet was terrified, and not of Adrian Wall.

  “Good morning, sweetheart.”

  “Pancakes. Yes.” His daughter moved down the stairs. She was twelve, a tomboy who loved archery and animals and sports cars. She kept her hair short, avoided makeup. Already, she could drive better than most adults. “Are you going to the range?”

  She meant the gun. The .45 wasn’t his duty weapon, but a military-grade pistol he’d bought secondhand at a surplus store. “I thought I might.”

  “How’s your face?”

  She rounded the kitchen island and kissed him gently on the cheek. He had stitches, bandages. Four teeth were loose. “It’s okay.”

  “I hate that your job is so dangerous.”

  He let the lie stand: that two prisoners jumped him at bed check. Not that Adrian Wall had almost killed him, then inexplicably chosen to let him live. “What do you want to do this morning?”

  “I don’t know. What do you want to do?”

  He slid pancakes onto a plate, and she forked a bite.

  “Car in the driveway.” She pointed with the fork.

  He saw it, too. “Shit.”

  “Daddy!”

  “You stay here.” He went to the door and took the gun with him.

  The warden was already out of the car. Jacks and Woods stayed by its side. “You’re supposed to be at work.”

  “I thought—”

  “I know what you thought.” The warden pushed into the house. “You thought a few bruises bought you a day off. This is not that day.”

  Olivet closed the door and trailed the warden into the kitchen. His daughter stopped eating when the warden pointed. “Isn’t she supposed to be in school?”

  Olivet placed the gun on the counter, but kept it close. “It’s okay, honey. Why don’t you take breakfast upstairs and watch TV.”

  The girl disappeared upstairs, and the warden watched her go. “The limp is barely noticeable. How many surgeries was it? Four?”

  “Seven.”

  “Still in remission?”

  “I don’t like it when you come here.”

  “I’m offended.”

  “I don’t like you bringing them here, either.”

  “See, this has always been the problem with you, Stanford. You think you’re above this somehow, that your money and conscience are somehow clean. What’s your share, now? A half million dollars? Six hundred thousand?”

  “My daughter—”

  “Don’t use her as an excuse. How much did that boat in your driveway cost, or the watch on your wrist? No. You’re no kind of hero.” The warden dipped a finger in the syrup and licked it. “We’ve been doing this for a lot of years, you and I. The money and drugs, the dirty prisoners and their dirty little crumbs.”

  “Don’t talk about that here. Jesus. My daughter is right upstairs.”

  “I don’t give a shit about your daughter.” The voice was like ice. “You let Adrian Wall kill my best friend.”

  “I didn’t let him do anything.”

  “You didn’t stop him, either. How should I feel about that? Preston’s dead and you’re not. Are you a coward, Stanford? Did you beg and crawl as William Preston stood firm and died for the trouble?”

  “It wasn’t like that.”

  “Then tell me how it was.”

  The moment spooled out, and there was hatred there, years of it. Olivet broke first. “Adrian doesn’t know anything,” he said. “If he did, he’d have told us years ago. That makes following him not just needless, but stupid. He’s broken and unpredictable, and we’re the ones who broke him. You can’t control a situation like that, which means we should have never been on that roadside in the first place. If anything got Preston killed, it was you, your inflexibility and ego and greed.”

  “Say that again.”

  “You shouldn’t be in my house.”

  “Here’s what’s going to happen.” The warden smiled a cold, bright smile and stepped close. “We’re going to find Adrian Wall, just the four of us. We’re going to hunt him down, and we’re going to kill him. Then I’ll decide if I need to kill you, too.”

  Olivet glanced at the gun, but the warden was fast and sure, and the gleam in his eyes was like a dare.

  Think of the girl.

  Of living through the next two minutes.

  “How do we find him?” Olivet cleared his throat and stepped away from the gun. “He could be in Mexico by now. Anywhere.”

  “He was with the woman last night?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s not in Mexico.”

  The warden spoke with familiar arrogance. Olivet looked up the stairs and thought he saw a shadow on the wall—his daughter, listening. “Listen,” he whispered. “I’m sorry about what I said.”

  “Of course you are. I understand.” The warden picked up the .45, dropped the magazine, and ejected the shell. “We all make mistakes, say things we don’t mean.” He pushed the .45 flat against Olivet’s chest, kept pushing until Olivet stepped backward and struck the sink. “But my friend is dead, and you’re not. That means no one walks away from this. You understand? Not you, not me, and sure as hell not Adrian Wall.”

  * * *

  Liz followed Adrian back to the mill, each with a jar of coins tucked in the crook of an arm. She slogged through the creek and did the math. Five thousand coins in thirty jars. One hundred and sixty-five to the jar. Maybe one seventy. What was that?

  Two hundred thousand dollars per jar?

  Liz could
n’t get her head around that. After thirteen years as a cop, she had $4,300 in the bank and $15,000 in a brokerage account. She didn’t care about money—that had never been her thing—but the thought of $6 million buried in a swamp made her head spin. People had died for it, and people had killed. That made it blood money. Did the stain adhere to Adrian?

  She watched him move through the green: the muddy pants and narrow waist, the sure, steady movements.

  “You okay back there?”

  “Yes,” she said, and decided that she was. Eli Lawrence was dead, his crime paid for. William Preston deserved what he got, and who was she to judge, anyway? She’d lied about a double murder and harbored not one fugitive but two. “What do you plan to do, now?”

  Adrian pushed beyond the last trees and waded through the stream that fed the mill. When he spoke, it was at the car. “Go away, I guess.” He took the jar from her hands and put it on the ground beside the other. “Find a place, some other life. It’s what Eli always wanted.”

  Elizabeth let her gaze move across the swamp. Mist was burning off; light fingered through. “What about the warden?”

  “I don’t need it anymore.” He smiled, and she knew he meant revenge.

  “And the gold?”

  “This’ll get me started.” He dipped his head at the two jars. “The rest will be there when I come back for it.”

  Elizabeth looked away from the trust implicit in that statement.

  “Come with me,” he said.

  “You’re joking.”

  “I’m not.”

  “My life is here.”

  “Is it really?”

  That was a tough question because he knew the answer almost as well as she. The town had turned against her; the job was pretty much over. “It’s been a long time, Adrian, since we knew each other.”

  “I’m not asking you to marry me.”

  She smiled at the joke, but felt the undercurrent, too. Things between them had shifted, and she thought it had to do with what they’d endured the night before. Maybe it was a tenderness born of touch, or the simple warmth of mutual understanding. Maybe they were both quietly alone, and eager to be something else. Whatever the case, his eyes were less guarded, the smiles a bit quicker. She felt a quickening, too, but feared it was the childhood crush, the fever dream. He was grinning and wounded and handsome in the yellow light. And were it truly that simple, she might have been tempted.