Zeke narrowed his eyes. Something in Lester’s tone troubled him. They were in the habit of paying each other a visit now and then, sharing a beer or a coffee. Lester’s wife, Anita, had taken an interest in Zeke’s widower status years ago and had been determined to do something about it. The Keegans had reached out to him many times in the past four months—since the night of the music festival—but he’d driven them away just as bluntly as he had everyone else, even though their own son, Josh, had been among the dead.
“If you’re not too old to ride or to sink a fence post now and again, I guess I’m not too old to fix a damn gate. I just turned forty-two, Lester. That don’t make me old; it makes me lazy.”
Lester took off his hat and ran his fingers around the soft brim. “Well, now—”
“What brings you out?” Zeke asked.
Lester’s smile slipped away and suddenly he looked his age. “Didn’t have much choice. You’re not answering your cell and you haven’t returned my calls from yesterday.”
Zeke wiped the back of his hand across his brow. “This doesn’t sound like a lunch invitation from Anita.”
“No,” Lester said in agreement. “You’re right about that. I need you to come with me, Zeke. We’ve got an appointment in town. Vickers said someone’s gotta be there to represent everyone we lost, and Savannah doesn’t have anyone but you to stand for her.”
Zeke felt a trickle of ice along his spine. He stared at the ground, at a blade of grass growing up through the dirt road.
“This some insurance thing?” he asked without lifting his gaze.
“I asked Vickers the same question. He says no.”
“Then what is it?”
“Asked him that, too. He says ‘revenge.’ ”
Zeke stood a little straighter. Doubt and suspicion flooded him, but logic prevailed. Vickers had lost his wife, Martha, that terrible night. The cartel had killed twenty-three people in all, with Savannah the youngest of them. As much as the Keegans and some of Zeke’s other friends might have wanted to see him leave the ranch for some human interaction, even just for a few hours, none of them would stoop so low as to hold out the possibility of revenge for bait.
“Feds say they’re working on it,” Zeke said. “We get directly involved, more of our people are gonna die. Leave it to them, they say.”
Lester’s blue eyes narrowed, the edges crinkling, and suddenly he looked older than ever.
“Leave it to them? We’ve tried that before and it didn’t work. Hell, that’s why we formed the Volunteers, ain’t it? The Mexican government is too damned disorganized and too corrupt, top to bottom, to stop the drug war and all the killing that goes on around it. If you could call this an act of terrorism, maybe you’d get the funding it would take to launch an all-out war on the cartels, and to hell with Mexican sovereignty. But the Feds know it’s all drug related, so what do we get? Exactly what we got the last time the media got up in arms about killings along the border: another fifteen hundred National Guard troops for additional patrols and promises from the FBI that they’re infiltrating the cartels, working to dismantle them from within, ’cause they’ve had so much success in the past. Now even the media’s forgotten about us, not that they were much help. All the spectacle they put on, all that mock horror, only lasts until the next tragedy comes along. That school shooting in Rhode Island knocked us right out of the news cycle.”
Lester gave a slow nod, as if to affirm everything he’d just said. He glanced up at Zeke.
“They can send all the National Guardsmen they want, but if there’s revenge to be had, nobody’s going to go out and get it for us. Hell, I didn’t get to be my age without learning at least that much, and neither did you.”
Zeke felt an all-too-familiar rage burning in his chest. It had been there ever since that October night.
“You don’t have to preach to me, Lester,” he said. “I’m living this too, remember?”
Lester pushed his shaggy hair away from his eyes and slid his hat back on.
“I haven’t forgotten,” he said, and glanced away from Zeke, up toward the main house.
Zeke averted his eyes, not wanting to see his vacant windows for fear that his voice might betray him and he might speak aloud the question that concerned him the most. Did he even belong out here anymore? Without a wife or a child, with his sister up in Virginia and their parents dead in the ground, what was the point of this life, holding every breath an extra beat just in case the bullets started flying?
Zeke had spent four months trying to come up with a reason to stay. The only one he’d found was the promise he’d made to himself—the promise that he wouldn’t leave until he knew the men with Savannah’s blood on their hands had paid the price, in full.
He slid the toolbox and the drill kit off the tailgate and onto the truck bed, then slammed the tailgate.
“You drive.”
* * *
As they made their way into town, Zeke spotted small clusters of people gathered near parked cars or milling about in front of shops. Victoria Jessup was in front of the post office with her two younger boys, and she looked to Zeke as if she were holding her breath. Sarah Jane Trevino, little sister to Ben, sat on the hood of her mother’s Ford. Some of the people in Lansdale that day watched Lester Keegan’s Jeep as it rolled through town and pulled into a spot across from the hardware store, but most of them ignored the new arrivals. They were all watching the front door of the Magic Wagon.
“What the hell’s going on here, Lester?” Zeke asked as they left the Jeep and started across the street toward the diner.
“Your guess is as good as mine, amigo.”
Bells jangled overhead as they entered the Magic Wagon. All around the diner, familiar faces turned toward them. Victoria Jessup’s eldest boy was there, along with Ben Trevino’s mother, Linda, and the pretty young wife of Tim Hawkins, the sheriff’s deputy who’d been shot through the throat. Mrs. Hawkins looked about five months along with her pregnancy now, and as sorrowful as her loss had been, Zeke couldn’t help thinking how lucky she was to have her new baby to remember Big Tim by. Now that he and Lester had arrived, there were more than two dozen people gathered in the diner, all but three of whom he knew had lost someone to the cartel’s bloodlust back in October. Two of the three were employees of the Magic Wagon, a waitress named Deena Green . . . and Skyler Holt.
It shamed Zeke to see Skyler, though he’d suspected she would be there. She smiled tentatively at him and he could muster only a nod in return. She’d gotten blond highlights in her hair and the look suited her. Curvy and bright and charismatic, Skyler was ten years his junior and the first woman he’d met in his life as a widower who had brought a lightness to his heart. She had called a dozen times after Savannah’s murder, but he had returned not a single one and had avoided her when he’d seen her in town. This was the first time he’d set foot in the Magic Wagon since October.
She nodded back, just a little tilt of the head. He would have liked to talk to her—had thought all along how nice it would be to see her smile again and hear her laugh—but he had nothing to offer in return. No joy to give.
Of all the faces that’d turned toward him and Lester as they’d entered, only one was entirely unfamiliar to Zeke. A stranger. The little man with the brown skin might have been thirty-five or fifty-five, depending on how many years he’d spent working in the sun. Perhaps five feet three inches tall and tipping the scales at a mighty one hundred and twenty pounds or so, he ought to have gone almost unnoticed in the room, but Zeke could feel an aura of intensity around him, as if he had everyone’s attention though everyone studiously avoided looking directly at him. He wore loose black cotton pants and a white shirt that made his sun-darkened skin stand out even more starkly, and his eyes were wide and round . . . the eyes, Zeke immediately thought, of a man who sat in the last row on a bus, talking to people nobody else could see.
His eyes were unnerving, and Zeke lowered his gaze, discomfited by his regard.
Alan Vickers stood up from the stool where he’d been perched.
“Zeke, welcome,” the white-bearded rancher said. “I’m glad Lester could persuade you to join us.”
Zeke glanced again at the little man, and again he looked away.
“Well . . . yeah, I’m here, Alan. But I’ve got work to do, as I’m sure we all do, so why not say your piece, whatever it is.”
“Of course,” Vickers replied. He glanced around the diner. “Deena? Skyler? If you ladies would step out for a time, maybe go on down to the park, I’ll send someone to fetch you when we’re done. And thank Agnes for the use of the place.”
Zeke watched curiously as the two waitresses took off their aprons, said quiet good-byes to several of those gathered, and then departed. Skyler walked within five feet of him and barely glanced up as she passed. For the first time, he noticed that the people in the Magic Wagon all seemed to have coffee or some other beverage, but not a single plate of food had been set before them. None of them had come here to eat. Whatever Vickers had in mind, the whole diner had been put at his disposal.
And why not? Zeke thought. He’s the landlord.
Vickers wore the smile of a heartbroken man trying his best. Zeke figured his own smile must have looked like that and vowed to himself to try to avoid smiling ever again. It was a wretched, pitiful expression, but Vickers cast it about with the confused air of excitement and apology found in men who’d sought truths better left unspoken.
“I want to thank you all for coming,” he said, his face reddening. “I’m not going to waste your time. I know most of you don’t want to be here. Hell, looking around at each other, knowing there’s only one thing everyone in this room has in common . . . it makes me want to scream.”
Vickers paused and took a breath. To Zeke’s surprise, nobody called out for him to get to the point. Maybe because they recognize the pain in his eyes from the mirror, Zeke thought.
Vickers went on. “I could give you a whole long buildup, folks. But I’d lose you halfway through, because no matter how long you’ve known me, you’re gonna have a hard time believing a damn word I say. So here’s the only preamble I’m gonna give you. Reality is a consensus. It is what we agree it is, and by ‘we’ I don’t just mean the people in this room, I mean society. We all grow up with an idea of what’s possible and what’s impossible. Most of you folks believe in God, or you did, once upon a time. We spend—”
His voice broke, thick with emotion, and then he smiled that painful smile again and forged on.
“We spend our lives building up these walls between what we believe in and what we don’t believe in, and it’s never easy when one of them gets broken down.”
Vickers gestured to the little man seated on a counter stool just beside him. The stranger had been sitting as still and silent as a monk in meditation, but now he blinked as if coming awake and glanced around at the mourners. His face held no expression and his storm-gray eyes were cold.
“This fella here is Enoch Stroud. His daughter, Lena, dated a small-time drug dealer out of Houston by the name of—well, his name doesn’t matter, really; point is, he stole from the Matamoros cartel. They could’ve just killed this kid, but there’s always some fool who thinks he’s smarter, thinks he can get away with something, and the cartel wanted to teach a different kind of lesson. They took Enoch’s daughter—”
The little man interrupted with a choking laugh that gave Zeke chills.
“Took ’er,” Enoch said, glaring at the gathered mourners one by one, as if accusing them of the crime. “Raped ’er. Left pieces of her for the boyfriend to find, wrapped up like birthday gifts and set on his bed or in the backseat of his car. Hands. Feet. Teeth. Breasts. Then her head, just to make sure we knew she was dead.”
“Oh, sweet Jesus,” Alma Hawkins said, covering her eyes so nobody would see her cry.
Tommy Jessup swore under his breath, but in the silence between Enoch’s words, they all heard it.
Enoch went on. “It was after we got her head that we buried her. Oh, we waited a week or so, but then we understood that the message had been sent and that we wouldn’t be getting any more of Lena back.”
Vickers had turned away from the man, and for the first time Zeke noticed that he was fiddling with something in his right-hand pocket, clutching it like it was some sort of talisman. For some reason it unnerved Zeke, as if he’d peered inside the man’s secret sorrow. He’d known Alan Vickers for most of his life but they’d never been friends, never had much in common besides geography. Now they had pain.
Zeke shifted his gaze. He wanted to bolt from the diner, from Lansdale, from fucking Texas, and go somewhere he could watch the snow fall and sit by a fire and feel like a stranger to the world. Because something was coming; he felt that very powerfully. This moment was building up to something that clearly frightened Vickers. And Zeke would have run from it, would have gone north until there were only white mountains and warm hearths, except for the single word he’d heard out of anybody’s mouth today that had tantalized him. The word Lester had used as bait to get him here.
“You want revenge,” he said, surprising even himself by speaking aloud.
Every pair of eyes in the diner shifted toward him, but Zeke kept his focus on Enoch.
The little man did not smile. He nodded, just once. “Yes, Mr. Prater. It is Mr. Prater?”
“I’m Zeke Prater,” he confirmed. Though how you knew that, I’d like to know.
“Here it is, then, Mr. Prater,” Enoch said, then took in the others with a sweeping glance. “I know a way to have my revenge on the Matamoros cartel and if you will all cooperate, you can have your revenge as well. Revenge and more.”
“What do you mean, ‘more’?” Lester asked, arms crossed.
A chair squeaked across the floor as Arturo Sanchez shifted to look at Enoch directly. “The Lord has a poor opinion of revenge, Mr. Stroud.”
“Not in the Old Testament he don’t,” Linda Trevino said. “Go on, Mr. Stroud. If there’s a way to fix these sons of bitches, we’re all ears. It won’t bring my son back, but it’ll ease my soul when I go to bed at night.”
Enoch looked at her, head bowed slightly, dark shadows beneath his eyes. “Interesting that you should put it that way, Mrs. Trevino.”
“What way?” she asked, and Zeke could see she was unsettled. “And how do you know my—”
Enoch clapped his hands on his thighs, still seated on the stool by the counter—so tiny in comparison to Vickers and yet somehow the focus of all attention.
“That’s enough of what Mr. Vickers called ‘preamble,’ don’t you think?” Enoch said, nodding as if in conversation with himself. “I think so. There’s only one way you folks are going to listen to the rest of what I’ve got to say without laughing me out of town or maybe stoning me in front of the town hall, and that’s if you see what I can give you with your own eyes.”
Zeke frowned. His skin prickled with a dark sort of anticipation that he didn’t like one bit. Whoever Enoch Stroud was, Zeke didn’t want anything to do with the man. But when Enoch nodded to Vickers and Vickers produced the object he’d been fiddling with from his pocket, Zeke couldn’t turn away. Several people muttered and Zeke saw the same unease he felt ripple through the diner.
“What the hell’s that supposed to be, some kind of tin whistle?” Lester asked.
“I don’t—” Vickers started, a strange combination of apology and relief flooding his face.
“Just play the tune, Mr. Vickers,” Enoch said. “Just play the tune.”
With a hitching breath, Vickers put the yellowed instrument to his lips and blew into it, one finger shifting across a trio of small holes on top. It was a kind of flute, strangely carved and with little streaks of dark brown along its shaft like war paint. The sound it emitted could not rightly be called music, but Vickers managed a sequence of discordant notes that had a certain melody when he repeated them a second and third time. It was one of the strangest
displays of incongruity Zeke had ever seen, but something about the tune tugged at the base of his skull as if part of him remembered it, down in what Lester always called his lizard brain—the part that hadn’t changed in people since cave days.
“This is stupid,” Big Tim Hawkins’s widow said. “What is this supposed to—”
The swinging door at the back of the dining room squeaked open, and Martha Vickers walked in from the kitchen, wearing the same dress she’d been buried in.
The bullet hole in her right biceps was still open, a dark, winking wound. Above her left eye, the missing part of her skull—the part blown out by the cartel gunman’s kill shot—had been covered by a thin membrane of skin like a birth caul. Even from across the room, Zeke could see the pulsing beneath it.
Screams filled the Magic Wagon.
Alan Vickers kept playing the flute, tears streaming down his face. He would not look at his wife. His dead wife, now up and walking, pale and sickly and shuffling but alive, a slow, uncertain smile making her lips tremble.
Zeke felt sick.
“Stop!” Lester shouted, storming across the room to knock the flute from Vickers’s hands. “Stop it!”
The bone pipe—for it was bone, Zeke could see that clearly now—skittered across the floor. Vickers shoved Lester away and lumbered after it, shifting a table out of the way to retrieve it while his dead wife swayed in place, waiting for another note.
“What the hell is this?!” Lester demanded, rounding on Enoch.
The little man had still not risen from the stool.
“It’s exactly what it looks like,” Enoch said, not smiling, his lip curling with hate. “Resurrection. Mrs. Vickers has been up and around for three days. Another week or so and she’ll be good as new, if I let her stay aboveground that long.”
“What the hell do you mean if you let her?” Zeke snarled, feeling his own hate—and his own hope—rising like a cobra.
“It’s all or none,” Enoch said. “I can give this gift to all of you, bring back all of the folks the Matamoros cartel murdered back on October twelfth. If you want it. If you all agree. In exchange, you—and the dead ones, the ones you lost—will help me get my revenge. We will all have our revenge, as long as you all are in agreement.”
Four Summoner’s Tales Page 10