Last Call for the Living

by Peter Farris

  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 tow
ers. 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.

  Sieg Heil!

  Sieg Heil!

  Sieg Heil!

  Many times their nine-by-five cell was the only place much of it made any sense.

  Hicklin conjured up a mental photograph of the basketball courts, him and Lipscomb taking turns on the pull-up bars, AB muscle keeping watch. They could have been father and son. There had been a power between them, a power to control and define the politics of prison yards.

  They prowled. They pranced. They stalked. It was a ruthless form of theater.

  Lipscomb used to say that they were the forgotten. No more mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters. Only the Brand mattered.

  Those memories of family and friends, a normal life on the outside, with its freedoms and rights and luxuries, had been erased.

  And that’s exactly how they preferred it.

  * * *

  Charlie tripped and fell to his knees. He was panting. Hicklin stopped to help him up.

  “Son, I’m about tired of this shit,” Lipscomb said. “I was curious how it might play out, but I ain’t so curious no more. Tell me where we heading or I’m just going to drop y’all right there in that water.”

  Hicklin raised a hand to the light, to the shadow that held it.

  “It’s close,” he pleaded. “Upstream.”

  Lipscomb turned the flashlight on Charlie, then back on Hicklin. They appeared pale and featureless, like faces lifted from the knotted trunks of trees.

  “I believe there’s an old hunting cabin over that way,” he said, a vague awareness flickering behind his eyes.

  * * *

  The trees grew bunched like arrows in a quiver. Charlie’s breathing intensified. Hicklin put a hand on the back of Charlie’s neck, feeling a fever heat, the skin slick with sweat. He thought the boy was on the verge of collapse. When he doubled over and began to heave, Hicklin patted him on the back, rubbing his shoulders in some strange, paternal way. An exasperated voice called from the shadows.

  “Okay, I think I’ve had all I can take of this here bullshit.…”

  Hicklin turned to Lipscomb and the tactical light, hoping to placate him with news of their proximity to the cash, when they both heard the click of the .357’s hammer. Lipscomb cocked his head curiously.

  Hicklin closed his eyes. Prepared to die.

  Then he was yanked off his feet.

  Charlie had sprung to life, like a linebacker charging a tackling dummy. Even more surprising was when he produced Flock’s snub nose and fired wildly at Lipscomb. Lipscomb ducked his head, throwing up his arms in surprise. He lost his grip on the tactical light and an eerie backlit shadow fell over them all. Still charging, Charlie fired again, grazing Lipscomb’s shoulder. The charge knocked him backwards, the shotgun slipping by its sling off his shoulder. He scurried up the slope, reeling, already drawing the .45.

  Charlie squeezed the trigger in succession, exhausting the wheel in less than ten seconds, dry-firing as if he thought the weapon would reload itself. It was random, panicked shooting that scared his target more than harmed him, Hicklin trying to gain an advantage but stumbling, yanked by Charlie to the ground. Lipscomb returned fire, narrowly missing them both. The sloppy, close-quarter firefight illuminated their mad scramble up the hill and the difficult footing to be had on a slope of pine straw and leaf marl.

  Lipscomb fired twice more, the muzzle flash providing a brilliant strobe, enough light to glimpse Hicklin and Charlie lunging toward him. He backpedaled blindly, tripping on the rot of a downed poplar. Before Lipscomb could fire again Hicklin caught him by the wrist. He yanked and twisted, liberating the HK, but Lipscomb proved too strong. They wrestled for a moment, all grimace and wet, chunky breaths—Charlie an accessory—the two old friends writhing like soldiers locked in a game of hand-to-hand.

  Lipscomb managed some separation, stunning Hicklin with a kick to the kneecap. He collapsed instantly, snagging Charlie off-balance, eyes searching the forest floor for the .45.

  Lipscomb stomped backwards through a mess of leaves and brush, reaching under his shirt for a stainless-steel Ruger he had tucked in a spine holster. He raised the revolver with a clear shot of Hicklin when his leg fell into a depression. His boot tripping a circular paddle.

  The sound they heard was a swift, mechanical attack. The bones in Lipscomb’s left leg snapped like a broomstick over an angry knee.

  He groaned through gritted teeth, firing the Ruger once up into the canopy. He fell sideways, dropping the pistol.

  And reached for the bear trap with both hands.

  * * *

  Lang left Hicklin’s truck and followed the winding path, not sure where it would lead him. Twenty minutes later Lang came upon a large opening, a ghost road he recognized as the one he’d driven up. He turned left and started to walk, breathing a sigh of relief at the sight of his Nissan up ahead. He’d already tried to call Crews on his cell phone, even text her the license plate number of the Chevy, but there was no signal.

  The reports from a barrage of gunshots struck his ears like a crack of thunder. A few moments passed. A fifth and sixth shot from a large-caliber handgun. It was close by, closer than he expected. His trot turned to a sprint. When he got to his pickup he turned and looked up at the wall of trees. Another gunshot—the last—rang out.

  He holstered his Kimber in the steering column mount and cranked the truck, wheeling it into a quick three-point turn. With only his running lights on, Lang drove back down the mountain road. Panting like a greyhound. Wondering what those animals might be doing to themselves up in those woods.

  * * *

  The underside of the trap’s jaws clamped on Lipscomb’s left leg below the knee, pinching its girth to the width of a beer bottle. The teeth of the trap were enormous, like those of an alligator. Heavy cast iron. Tempered steel springs. A chain disappeared under a blanket of leaf decay, the ring holding the trap in place pinned down deep into the earth.

  The sudden pain had punched the air from his lungs. Face depleted, he squinted, studying his leg in disbelief, his upper body rocking in a kind of halfhearted sit-up. Grinding his teeth as if being eaten alive.

  Hicklin promptly picked up the tac light and searched for the .38 on the ground, finding it just half a foot from Lipscomb’s reach. He played the beam across his old friend’s leg, Lipscomb choking a scream off at the sight of his knee. He turned a pale face toward the light, to Hicklin standing over him with the Ruger. Charlie had scooped up the shotgun and was at his side, holding the Mossberg with shaky hands like a caricature of some rural guerilla.

  “Keys?” Hicklin said.

  Lipscomb wrenched his eyes back and forth between them, a pained look masking the animal ready to fight to its death. He reached in a breast pocket and handed Hicklin the keys to the handcuffs. Lipscomb raised his hands submissively, palms up, e
very twitch of muscle fiber causing him to wince and strain. Hicklin steadied the revolver, his eyes veiled.

  “You win,” Lipscomb said. “Just take me to a hospital … you can just push me out the door. I don’t care. Just don’t leave me like this! I won’t say nothin’ to nobody! I swear it!”

  Lipscomb’s begging came like a poison chaser. Even with a leg one tug from coming clean off, Hicklin knew Lipscomb could talk his way through anything. A savvy pitch was coming.

  You help him and see. He’ll roll on you in a heartbeat.

  Unless there was a bullet in his head.

  Hicklin looked around, dancing the tac light off tree trunks and thick nothingness. As if he half-expected to see a bystander frantically dialing the authorities.

  * * *

  Kill him.

  Maybe.

  Then what are my options?

  * * *

  Despite the protests, Hicklin pressed a muddied boot to Lipscomb’s thigh, digging the muzzle of the .38 against his uninjured kneecap.

  This is worse than any death.…

  Charlie looked away.

  Hicklin pulled the trigger.

  Breathe in the fire, breathe in the fire.

  God hates a liar on a Palm Sunday.

  Stick in the knife, stick in the knife.

  God hates a coward on a Palm Sunday.

  ELEVEN

  A woman shook a tambourine, accenting the trebly rhythms of the guitar player. The audience was transfixed. The small church proceedings now a hot, sweat-soaked ordeal. The air smelled of camphor and steam. Witness after witness took the pulpit. Some men rubbed the tops of the wooden boxes with the palms of their hands. Yet the boxes remained closed for now.

  An improvised hymn was sung, the tune turning grim and erratic. The voices of the congregation meshed and then disconnected. The guitar player carefully selected each note with fingers that strained to find them.