Zion

by Dayne Sherman

  Soon, they found the old Union Church, a picturesque little chapel with a cupola and green shutters, a building that once quartered Union soldiers during the siege of Vicksburg in 1863. The road in front of it led deep into the national forest. It was gravel, a substandard county road that covered twenty-five miles all the way to the hospital in Meadville. Heloise Cate’s directions appeared clear enough, but it would have been better had they talked to her father, because she seemed fuzzy in her directions once she got to church. She said Sarepta Baptist would be on the right side of the road, and they were looking for the sign for Forest Service Road 179. She said it was several roads below Sarepta. The camp was near the end of the road on the right side, somewhere before it dead-ended. Heloise recalled a defunct cistern out beside the house that hadn’t been used since her father had a well drilled shortly after buying the land. The camp had a front porch. All other details were sketchy.

  The marshal drove south for ten miles. “This is the longest gravel road I’ve been on in a years. Wonder if that woman sent us on some kind of goose chase,” he said. “Hell, Jim Cate is probably laying up in her four-poster bed in Natchez.”

  “No, I believe she was telling the truth,” Tom said, rubbing his jaw with his palm. He was now thinking of Wesley and the marshal’s daughter, and the happy future missed. He wished that Brownlow hadn’t said this about the two of them, about coveting his son for marriage. Then almost in tears, he studied the useless map, looking at nothing on it, trying to pull himself together.

  “You all right, Tom?”

  “I’ll get better.”

  The sky was eclipsed at times because of the trees as they rode in silence a few more minutes, an uneasy mist in the air. It was seven-thirty, and it would be pitch dark by eight-thirty. After a couple of miles, they saw a steeple off to the west side of the road. There was a steel sign out front: SAREPTA BAPTIST CHURCH, FOUNDED 1810. The house of worship was nestled under a canopy of oak trees and was as empty as a hog trough in the middle of the day.

  The hilly road had the occasional curve. It was seemingly built atop a natural ridge or some land formation above the surrounding terrain. Marshal Brownlow slowed down, and they studied the road past the church. A couple of times they stopped to inspect side roads. The men looked for the Number 179 sign but never found it. One roadway appeared promising because of some fresh motor grader marks as it came to Union Church Road.

  “That little side lane here is better than this main gravel we’re driving on now, so it’s probably managed by the federal government,” the marshal said.

  “That sounds right to me,” Tom replied.

  Brownlow stopped the truck at the roadway. He stared across the truck cab to the opening in the timberland that ran west. “It’s supposed to be at least a mile in that direction. Then a good ways off the gravel road. This might be it, sign or no sign. My experience is the feds generally maintain their roads, while the local governments can’t afford to do maintenance hardly at all. This could be the one.” The dogs barked loudly as if awakened for feeding time.

  “Okay,” Tom said.

  The marshal continued, “The dogs’ll be barking whenever we slow down or stop, so I reckon we ought to drive a half a mile and then just get out and walk.”

  “You think the deputy sheriff is there now waiting for us?” Tom put down the Mississippi map, folding it away and placing it on the truck seat.

  “For some reason, I doubt it. But we ought to see his car tracks along the way if he’s waiting. I definitely don’t want Jim Cate to run off or kill us, either of us, so we need to be careful. We’re dealing with a true serpent,” the marshal said.

  “You up for a long walk?”

  “Sure. I’ve got to where I walk about two miles in the evenings for my health. I’ll make it.” The marshal’s chest pain had eased. “This sure is a finely kept gravel road, federal work. You can still see the motor grader tracks. It’s been here within a day or two, and there ain’t many tire tracks from regular automobiles, but maybe a pickup with some mud grips.” He had pulled the nose of the truck to the inlet of the side road and was looking out the window to the ground.

  “I think you’re right. I see some grip tires.” Tom pointed to the dirt road.

  Then they started idling down the road at no more than five miles an hour. There were grassed-over byways and logging roads but no signs of houses. No mailboxes, just big woods on both sides of the lane.

  Dogs were cutting up in the back of the truck. The marshal decided to stop the pickup. He said it was time to walk a while, and that they ought to remove the shotgun and rifle from the rear window. So the men got them down and chambered both weapons with buckshot and bullets respectively. The dogs barked even louder in the big cage, and the marshal threw them a couple of links of venison sausage from his ice chest to keep them quiet for a while.

  The men walked the gravel road near the ditch and could see that the sides fell steeply into gullies sixty-five feet or more down, and the gullies were thick with trees and underbrush.

  After a few minutes, Tom saw the glint of a tin roof off in the distance. It was some kind of house on a ridge. He pointed to it and stopped. The marshal was walking alongside him, and he strained his eyes to make out the roofline himself.

  “Let’s keep on walking,” the marshal said. “When we get almost square of it, we’ll take its measure and decide how to proceed. Be ready to find cover in the trees and get down low.” They walked on.

  At the driveway, which was nothing but a rusted metal culvert in the dirt, there was no sign of the deputy’s car on the road near the house itself, no sign of the blue Suburban either. However, they did see a set of tire tracks turning into the driveway itself, but only one set. Nothing showed any life but the tracks in the freshly graded Forest Service road.

  “The deputy hasn’t made it out here. There’s no evidence of car tracks in this sandy gravel, just a truck with some grips. I’m not a bad tracker.” Tom studied the dusty gravel road. “He’s not been through here yet with the car. Should we wait on him?” Tom asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe he never came this way. But this ain’t a clear situation. No way to tell. If Jim’s in that house, I don’t want him to slip off on us. I ain’t waiting no longer on the deputy. I’ll lead. If I take off my hat, get down. If I whistle, shoot something. Let’s move to the trees,” Brownlow said.

  “All right,” said Tom. He gripped his Savage rifle in his hands.

  The men eased over into the tree line and took refuge briefly behind a couple of giant blackjack oaks.

  James Luke stood at the camp doorway scanning the front of the property. There was only so much pain the liquor and aspirin could conquer. He could hardly rest or sit still. His shoulder was aching even with new gauze and black salve on it. He needed a doctor or at least a good nurse. His lawyer bought and paid for doctors who did work for his clients, dirty work for prostitutes and shady people in slip and fall cases, even injured hit men. He wanted to see the lawyer’s paid doctor soon, but he couldn’t travel until it was dark. The camp was hot inside with no electricity and no fan. He’d raised the windows the night before, which mercifully had bug screens on them, but the camp was a veritable sauna.

  He stood at the screen door and looked toward the road, and he took a hit of whiskey. He drank from a tall glass of bourbon. The camp had an adequate stash of hard liquor, plenty of canned food, too. He could stay there through half of the fall and summer if the festering wound didn’t kill him. His rifle, a Remington pump, lay on the kitchen table. The clip and chamber were loaded with soft point .30-06 cartridges. He looked across the front of the property through the screen door, the whiskey glass at his lips, took a swallow and lowered the glass. Then he saw a gray cowboy hat. He couldn’t make out a face or body, just the crown of the felt hat amongst some trees. Alarmed, he ran to the table, put down the glass, and grabbed the deer rifle.

  Back at the screen door, he opened it and dialed the Redfield telesc
opic sight to six power. He looked through it aiming at the hat, but it went out of view. He kept the rifle and the scope ready and scanned the tree line. Then the hat as well as the face came back into view. “That dumb-assed Donald Brownlow,” he said.

  James Luke shot so quickly it surprised him. He immediately realized that he’d probably missed. He pumped the gun and leaned against the door jam, bracing the rifle forearm against it. His shoulder throbbed. This time he tried to find the marshal in the optical sight, put him in the crosshairs and take a decent aim, make it slam home. But the marshal was no longer there. He couldn’t see anymore. James Luke searched back and forth. Maybe the stupid bastard slipped off, he thought. Maybe I hit him after all. Maybe he’s dead.

  But before James Luke could find the marshal again, his left hand exploded in blood, the pinky finger a mangling of flesh that flowered before him. He screamed and howled in pain and got back into the house, slamming the screen door and bolting the solid door shut. The twice-wounded man dropped the gun on the table and wrapped his hand in a dishtowel, holding it above his head. He paced a few agonizing steps. Then he removed the towel and looked at it. It wasn’t as bad as he’d thought, but a chunk of flesh was gone from his hand, and his little finger was now baptized in blood. He writhed in pain, grabbing another towel from the cooking area and then ran to the truck out back with his deer rifle hanging over his shoulder on a leather strap. He cranked the Suburban and looked at his hand under the towel again, unsure how he wasn’t hit in the chest with the bullet. He barreled down the logging road wide open and cursing. It snaked behind the camp as it came near a hay pasture at the rear of Sarepta Baptist Church.

  “Oh my God,” the marshal hollered. He lay flat on the ground like a big hound dog flopped out for a rest. “I thought we were pinned down, but I hear a truck.”

  Tom crouched behind a beech tree. He’d leaned over and used a low limb to steady his rifle for a second shot. He saw a glimpse of the blue vehicle as it fled from behind the camp into the thick woods. Much of Tom’s life had been spent trying to avoid violence, attempting to live in a manner different from his fighting uncles, and now he was just like his father wading into the fray to stop the conflict. Yet now he wanted to kill James Luke and wished he had. “I just saw James Luke’s blue Chevy. There must be a way out the back of the place. But you okay?” Tom asked.

  “Yeah, but I heard a bullet hit a limb above me. Did you do any good?” The marshal sat on his butt.

  “I believe I hit him, but I don’t know how bad. Not bad enough to stop him from driving the truck.”

  “His wife didn’t say nothing about a road into the woods. Look, you’re in better shape than me. Go get the truck and come on back for me. I’ll wait here in case he doubles around. But Tom, I didn’t whistle.”

  “No and you’re mighty lucky I didn’t wait.”

  “Thank you. Give me your rifle in case he comes back through. I might need some range.”

  Tom helped the man to his feet. They swapped guns and a cardboard box of ammo apiece. Tom took the truck keys. He left jogging in his cowboy boots, pounding the dirt and grass to get to the road, the short-barreled 12 gauge in his hand.

  The marshal’s heart was throbbing, beating dangerously fast. He checked the rifle chamber in the Savage lever action for a live .308 round and tried to get into a better position to see the driveway and the front of the house, but he heard the truck winding out in the woods covering a distance, leaving north of the camp at a demonic pace.

  James Luke’s countenance fell when he saw a new bright yellow gate ahead on the pathway to the pasture. It was a steel gate made of sturdy oilfield drilling pipe painted canary yellow. It was at the end of the easement through the woods and on land owned by the church. He had driven this route many times since he started coming to hunt in Meadville. There had never been any talk of a new gate, and this yellow monster must have been built by the church after hunting season ended. He could see a heavy brass padlock on it, and at first he thought about taking the rifle to it, shooting it clear through. He was half a mile from the camp and knew better than to try to back out on the trail. Bleeding badly from his hand, he had no time to waste. Instead of using the rifle bullet in place of a locksmith, he backed up the Suburban about fifty feet. He strapped himself in with the seatbelt, the first time he’d ever put it on, and he had trouble doing this because of his wounds. Then he floored the accelerator on the big block engine and was at the gate in seconds, feeling the concussion run through his bones like lightning, causing his shoulder and hand to throb even worse than before, the towel falling off his bleeding left hand. He barreled past the gate and into the open pasture and heard steam spraying out of the radiator, but he slammed down the pedal again and headed across the pasture toward the rear of Sarepta Baptist Church.

  Hot steam began to cover the windshield, and he could tell the truck was favoring the right side. The rifle had fallen to the floorboard and lodged itself halfway under the seat. He hoped it wasn’t broken. James Luke was trying to drive as fast as the motor could turn by the time he hit the main road, but he knew he’d blown a front right tire, and all he could do was curse like a demon.

  Tom drove the marshal’s pickup all the way to the camp. Brownlow met him near the front steps of the place and stood at the passenger side door, the dogs barking madly when they saw their master at the front of the camp.

  The marshal said, “It sounded like a genuine collision, but the truck kept on a-going. Let’s try to follow him. But Tom, I’m about whipped. Crawling on the ground took my strength.”

  “All right, get in,” Tom said, staying put in the driver’s seat.

  The hounds barked in the truck bed. They made a commotion as soon as the marshal got into the passenger’s seat. Tom drove around to the back of the house and followed the tracks in the tall grass where the old logging road was located, and they followed James Luke’s route through last year’s orange sage grass and over some young saplings.

  Marshal Brownlow sat with the shotgun barrel out of the window, having swapped weapons again. The rifle lay propped up on the seat beside Tom, the steel barrel pointing to the floor. Tom drove down the logging road at a reasonable speed. He was cautious. The worst thing that could happen was an ambush, Tom thought. I could get myself killed in a hurry just like my son. He grimaced.

  They came to the tangled yellow gate and saw the skids in the dirt and the tracks where the tire had gone flat, but the vehicle tracks kept on heading across the field.

  The chrome bumper lay on the ground. “Son of a bitch. He ’bout tore his truck to pieces,” Brownlow said. He got on the radio and began to attempt to call any law enforcement in radio range. After a time, the marshal found a volunteer fireman listening, and he said he’d telephone the sheriff’s office in Meadville to ask for help. When they passed Sarepta Baptist, they could see a line of ruts going north toward the old Union Church.

  They followed the tracks cautiously, unsure of what might await them. The men didn’t even know if James Luke was alone. It appeared that two tires were flat, the front tires. The vehicle couldn’t go very far. They slowed, listening for the truck, but he could no longer hear the revving Chevrolet engine. It wasn’t long before dark.

  “He can’t be no piece from here. Let’s hold out a while,” Brownlow said.

  “We’d better wait on that deputy. At least we have the dogs if we need to hunt him up,” Tom said.

  A Volkswagen Beetle with two teenaged boys careened toward them on the gravel road. The marshal waved his arms to get them to pull over, and they skidded the tires to a stop near his police truck.

  “Howdy, officer,” the young driver said to the marshal.

  “Did you see a blue panel truck on the way over here?” Brownlow asked

  “Yes, sir. It turned toward Aldersgate Chapel back yonder, and the front tires were on the steel rims. We about met him head on. I saw that he made the right turn onto the chapel road. I watched him in my rearview mirror. L
ooked kind of funky, officer.”

  “Boys, y’all stay away from here. There’s a killer on the loose, and you just passed him on his way to hell,” the marshal said.

  Brownlow thanked the boys, and the Volkswagen traveled south toward Meadville.

  Tom and the marshal discussed the danger, their guns held tight in their hands. The Franklin County deputy sheriff soon pulled in behind the marshal’s truck where they’d been waiting ten minutes on the road.

  “What happened to you?” the marshal asked.

  “I never could find the camp or the right road,” Deputy Lewis said. “I drove all around here but gave up. I never found the right Forest Service road. Ain’t no Number 179 sign nowhere.”

  “We tried to radio you but never got anybody,” said the marshal.

  “My radio is dead broke,” the deputy said, a frown on his face.

  “Y’all can’t buy a new one?”

  “No, the county’s broker than I am, and that’s awful damned broke.”

  The marshal gave him a summation of events. “Can’t we assist you in discharging the warrant?” The marshal tried to be deferential.

  “Yeah, don’t mind if I see it, do y’all?” Lewis said.

  “Be glad to show you.” The marshal gave the deputy the warrant. “You got any backup?” asked Brownlow.

  “No, I’m it. The sheriff’s in Osyka at a funeral. At least you got them tracking dogs.” The deputy handed the warrant papers back to the marshal.

  “Yeah, I’ve got two good bloodhounds. And Tom here’s a marksman.” Marshal Brownlow gestured to Tom.

  “Is the Aldersgate Chapel Lane a dead end?” Tom asked.

  “I reckon. I don’t recall ever going down that lane, but I suspect it’s like most of these little side roads that go nowhere,” said Deputy Lewis.

  They drove a couple hundred yards to the chapel road, and the tracks clearly made an easterly turn into it. Deputy Lewis established a roadblock with his patrol car to keep anyone in or out, and the marshal parked his truck near Aldersgate Chapel Lane, but not in the middle of the road in order to provide a safe place to hide if necessary.