by Peter Farris
“Just leave the cart there,” Hicklin muttered.
Charlie got in. Hicklin put the pickup in gear.
“Why are you crying?” Charlie said.
“I ain’t.”
But a tear had squeezed from the corner of an eye. Hicklin wiped his cheek, surprised when his fingers came away wet. He didn’t say anything and neither did Charlie. They got back on the interstate and drove south until a sign for a cheap motel caught Hicklin’s attention.
It was well after midnight. A light rain began to fall. The motor lodge was poorly lit, the lot mostly empty. Hicklin noticed they could park behind the long row of rooms and out of sight. He gave Charlie cash to pay for three nights, not sure if they’d even be staying more than six hours. As the boy walked away, Hicklin waited with the engine running. A hand on the .45 tucked under his right leg.
And he closed his eyes again and held his breath against the pain.
And the flowers died, on the northbound side.
And I could care less.
This branded man’s headed west.
TWELVE
Hicklin sat naked at the edge of the bathtub, watching the warm water mingle with his own blood. He’d never felt so vulnerable in his life, not even when he was forced to strip for some screw. But he really didn’t have a choice.
“I just can’t get it. It’s too deep.”
Charlie was attempting to extract the bullet from Hicklin’s back. He needled and gouged with a pair of tweezers, the black hole near Hicklin’s shoulder blade oozing blood like a stopped-up garden hose. Hicklin wore a sustained grimace on his face. He reached with his good arm for the can of beer resting on the rim of the tub.
“I don’t think I can do it. So close, but … I’m sorry,” Charlie said, unable to hide the disappointment in his voice.
After another particularly painful minute of digging with the tweezers, Hicklin realized Charlie was probably doing more harm than good.
“You tried, Charlie,” he said. “All you can do. Go on clean it real good and hand me that bottle of Advil.”
Hicklin turned the bottle up. Five or six little flesh-colored pills dropped into his palm. He downed them with a High Life chaser and stretched his neck until something popped. He pivoted and winked at Charlie.
“Damn,” Charlie said.
He cleaned and dressed Hicklin’s wound as best he could, his patient sipping beer, staring at the pink water swirling around his feet and down the drain. Finished, Charlie draped a towel over Hicklin’s shoulders. Then Charlie took a step back, as if a sudden idea could have knocked him off-balance if he wasn’t careful.
“You know I bet my mother could help you,” he said.
Hicklin didn’t move, but his mood turned a shade darker.
“She’s a nurse,” Charlie clarified. “She would know what to do.”
“Her name’s Lucy? Lucy Colquitt?” Hicklin said.
They were silent for a while, both waiting to see who would speak first.
“So it’s true? About you and my mother?”
“She sounds real familiar.” Hicklin let out a nervous laugh.
“So what are we supposed to do?”
Hicklin didn’t answer. He gestured for Charlie to leave him alone.
He shaved. It took almost twenty minutes to get dressed, but Hicklin managed without asking for any more help. The boy had done enough as far as Hicklin was concerned. But the beer and pills could mask only so much. His right arm tingled and he couldn’t stand straight up. Over the years he’d been punched and kicked and bitten, sliced and stabbed, gouged and choked.
This pain was different.
* * *
Charlie turned on the showerhead, testing the water with his hand. Hot. Hotter. Hottest. He pulled off the soiled clothes and eased into the tub. The stream of warm water felt good. He sank to his knees. Sat Indian-style, a week’s worth of sweat and crud washing off him.
There was a new toothbrush, paste, mouthwash and deodorant waiting for him on the bathroom counter. He used a third of the tube of toothpaste, brushing his teeth for nearly ten minutes.
He opened the door and found Hicklin sitting back against the headboard of one of the twin beds, smoking a cigarette, watching a muted television. A cable news ticker scrolled across the bottom of the screen. The Pope. An earthquake. A flood. The economy. The President. Hicklin opened a bag of chips and offered it to Charlie while he dressed.
“How you feel?” Hicklin said.
“Better. You shaved your mustache.”
Hicklin waved a hand, as if to ward off the reminder of his new look.
“Get you somethin’ to eat,” he said. “I already made me a sandwich.”
* * *
It was midnight when Sallie Crews arrived at the Church of the Holy Lamb.
A frantic scene outside. Bodies haphazardly lying on the ground, some newly dragged from the church, many in distress. Pockets of people comforting one another, tending to the wounded, restraining the hysterical.
Emergency lights lit the faces of the living and the dead. Agents and state troopers set up a perimeter. EMTs established triage. Crews left her vehicle and crossed over to Deputy Bower. She could tell Bower was badly shaken. A man bleeding behind one ear walked slowly past her as if she weren’t there. He held a snake hook in one hand, a burlap sack in the other.
“Don’t go in there,” Crews said sharply, and to Bower, “Have you seen Sheriff Lang?”
The deputy looked blankly at her.
“Bower?” she said again.
Bower turned to the church. “I ain’t never seen nothin’ like that.”
The man with the hook was just outside the door, silhouetted like a spectral exterminator. Light came through bullet holes in the front wall. Crews walked up to the threshold and looked inside. At least five dead bodies in the aisle leading to the altar. She asked the man in the doorway what happened. He didn’t answer. His grip on the snake hook tensed. Crews inched forward, cautiously watching the wrangler.
He picked up a five-foot timber rattler and dropped it into the sack. The homely church smelled of blood and wholesale carnage. She heard someone moan. Lang was lying on his side beneath an overturned pew, a snake coiled against a knee. She heard those same warning sounds elsewhere in the church, the rattles like crickets in a pasture.
Can I get to him?
The wrangler methodically made his way through the church, stopping often to hook snakes, lifting them carelessly into the sack. At Crews’ urgent request he coaxed the snake away from the Sheriff’s body, pinching it behind the head.
Lang was in big trouble, breathing badly. He opened an eye for Crews.
She ran for help.
* * *
Hicklin made his bones with the Brotherhood by killing an inmate to prove himself. Two weeks later he stared up at bedsprings, listening to his bunk mate. A folded newspaper was laid across the toilet. Two guards patrolled their tier, doing their counts with an old-fashioned hand clicker.
Hicklin heard them click off each cell in pairs. Then the cell door locked automatically. The guard in the central control booth had tucked them in for the night.
You did good, son, Preacher said.
Don’t call me son.
I figure you to have no daddy. Breast-fed from a damn dog, did ye?
Hicklin locked his fingers behind his head.
You hear me? Preacher said.
I hear you.
The Brand started out west. Long time ago. But it’s here. Right here between these walls. The hacks don’t know the extent of it.
I think they do.
Nah, son. Trust me.
What do I do now?
Well, tomorrow we gonna play cards and lift.
I prefer chess.
Thinking man’s game, Preacher said, chuckling. You’re so sophisticated.
Anything to pass the time.
What you know about time, son?
One day. Then another. Another after that, Hicklin replie
d.
One hour. One minute. Ever live like that? I break my day into twenty-second blocks. A couple of breaths.
I don’t follow.
Oh, you will. There’s an art to it. Livin’ minute to minute. I call it the increment rule.
Yeah?
Yeah. Start hearing different. Start seeing different. Living like that becomes a drug. You walk around in the goddamn zone all day, every day.
I like that.
So how’d it feel?
How’d what feel?
Don’t be coy, Preacher said.
Stuck ’im in his ribs. I’ve had harder times filletin’ a catfish. Dragged his body all around the damn floor to get the message across. My ten will be life soon as they find out.
They ain’t gonna find out.
How you know that?
Didn’t I tell you to trust me? We run this show. This is our playground.
I don’t see how. Browns and blacks. Sheer numbers. The yard here it’s like twenty to one.
But they all know.
Know what?
How goddamn sick and crazy we are. Five of us counts for plenty. And fear go a long ways, Preacher said.
Fear?
Yeah.
What ’bout me?
You’re one of us now.
Don’t have a choice, do I?
Not really.
Yeah?
Yeah. What about Lucy?
She’s dead to me. As I am to her.
Sweet girl.
I don’t care anymore. Haven’t cared for a while.
You know what this is, right? Preacher said.
The Brand?
Yeah.
I think so.
Well, what is it?
Lookin’ out for our own. Us against them.
Lipscomb chuckled.
What’s so funny?
Heroin. Meth. OxyContin. Cough syrup. Cell phones. Cigarettes. Addresses. Bank accounts. Contracts. Protection. Prostitution. Politics. We play the game because the game is there to be played.
So it ain’t just ’bout us.
No, niggers and spics useful to us sometimes.
So it’s all about power, huh?
That is a special word, Preacher said.
Yeah?
Say it again.
What?
“Power.”
Power, Hicklin said.
You done good today, son. That faggot was a snitch and had to be taken care of anyway. You know that, right?
Yeah.
Sieg Heil, Lipscomb said.
White power.
Now come up here and give me a kiss.
Go fuck yourself.
If only I could, Preacher said, chuckling again. If only I could.
* * *
They didn’t leave the motel room. Hicklin watched television, paying close attention to the local news out of Atlanta, doing his best to hide his discomfort.
Charlie slept well into the afternoon. He woke up to find Hicklin watching television in the same position he’d maintained most of the night. The window drapes were drawn, the room nice and cool. If he had slept, Charlie didn’t know.
“How’s your back?”
Hicklin ignored the question. “You were having one helluva nightmare last night.”
“I used to never have nightmares,” Charlie said.
“Don’t lay no guilt trip on me, now.”
“I wasn’t.”
Charlie stretched his arms above his head. Arched his back like a cat waking from a lazy afternoon’s nap. A weatherman on television was pointing to a tropical storm gaining strength in the gulf.
* * *
Lulled by a couple cold beers that night, Charlie fell into a peaceful sleep. Hicklin slowly got up and turned off the lamp. He left the television on, a gray blank screen. His last cigarette smoldered in the ashtray, wreaths of smoke hovering above the twin beds.
He watched Charlie and considered leaving. It had been foolish to stay that long anyway. Quietly, Hicklin packed the duffel bag and grabbed the keys to the truck. Tucked the handgun inside the waistband of his jeans. Every movement proved difficult, the wound below his shoulder blade having a paralyzing effect.
Hicklin had a hand on the doorknob. He turned for a last look at Charlie. The boy slept soundly, no nightmares now. Living up to his nickname again, Hicklin thought, sleeping as though he lay in a coffin.
Hicklin hooked the curtain aside and studied the half-full parking lot. Their room faced a wooded lot, but he could still faintly hear the hum of traffic on the interstate.
Go. Just go.
After a few moments he set the duffel bag down, wincing as he did so.
And like Charlie, Hicklin didn’t know where to go.
* * *
“What time is it?” Charlie asked.
“About six.”
Hicklin got up from bed. Made a pot of coffee, poured a cup and walked past Charlie back to the twin bed. Hicklin fingered the TV remote, mindlessly channel-surfing. The dressing for his wound needed changing. Charlie couldn’t help noticing how uncomfortable Hicklin looked.
“You can go, I figure.”
“Go?”
“Yeah. I guess that’s the only thing to do now.”
“Just go?” Charlie said, his voice cracking with indignation. “I don’t know where to go.”
“Go back to your own life. Your momma. Finish school.”
“Could you go back? After all this? I’m not sure I can.”
“Course you can. You’re a bright boy.”
“Look at me,” Charlie demanded.
His tone gave Hicklin pause. He raised an eyebrow, regarding Charlie’s cheekbones and ears, the crease between the boy’s eyes just above the nose. Hicklin knew he saw himself, as if in a mirror from childhood. Or back during his first stint, when the fear came at night, just a fish staring beyond the bars, at the darkness of the cell block. The smell of concrete and iron. Waking every morning with the knowledge he might have to kill someone to stay alive.
“Tell me it’s not true,” Charlie said.
“What?”
“Tell me you don’t think it’s true.”
Hicklin stamped his cigarette out. Both his hands were trembling.
“I think it’s true if that’s the truth we want,” he said.
* * *
The prison-issue pillow came wrapped in plastic. Hicklin melted the bag down. When it was cool and pliable he rolled it between his palms until it took on the shape of a railroad spike. He put it in his hiding place. When he took it out the following night it was hard enough to sharpen an edge against the rim of his bedpost. Didn’t take long. An hour here and there, working in secret.
When Hicklin had fashioned the plastic into a workable point, he wrapped the bottom edge in duct tape. Worked the grip in his hand until it was comfortable. For two weeks the shank stayed hidden until Hicklin was ready to use it.
Everything went according to his plan on the stairwell. He brought the shank down onto the base of his target’s neck. Going deep. Hicklin felt the vertebrae part and his victim’s legs buckled.
Hicklin walked away from the scene thinking about what was for breakfast.
* * *
Charlie watched the light fade around the edge of the motel room curtains. An artificial orange glow replacing the daylight. Hicklin fidgeted with the air conditioner. His mood a little brighter, he smiled and told Charlie how in prison they never had the luxury of AC. How much he was going to enjoy freezing near to death that night. They shared a laugh and maybe to their ears that laughter sounded similar.
Charlie spoke of the plans he’d made in what now seemed to him his other life. What he would like to have in his workshop one day. He explained—because Hicklin expressed interest—that a good scientist or engineer always kept a log of his progress. Charlie favored a notebook, although it could be considered quaint, but eventually wanted a really powerful desktop computer to design custom models. He outlined for Hicklin the basics
, like tools: pliers, screwdrivers and a good stock of sandpaper of varying grits. Cradle stands and spike rows and an assembly jig for the rocket fins and side cutters. Plastic cement.
The details gave Hicklin some pleasure. He enjoyed hearing Charlie describe what obviously was a great passion, although Hicklin understood nothing about model rocketry. Charlie rambled on about different construction methods, how he’d once made an ogive nose from balsa wood, a design so impressive the president of the rocket club had said it was as fine a piece of craftsmanship as he’d ever seen. Charlie smiled, remembering this unaccustomed pride in himself.
He told Hicklin about the parasite drag he encountered on one particular model. “It had been the launch lug all along,” Charlie explained, but that happened before he’d built his first tower launcher. By eliminating the drag he’d discovered a more stable trajectory for the rocket. “When you watched a rocket rise like that,” he said, “the sky seemed to grab it and pull it higher.”
Hicklin smoked, nodding here and there, asking Charlie what this word or that word meant. He tried to picture a tiny rocket launched from a field. Tried to follow its trajectory.
He popped Advil and drank bottled water from the mini-fridge, switching to beer when Charlie offered one to him. The black Mossberg was on the bed, by his side. When Charlie reached for his pack of cigarettes on the nightstand Hicklin didn’t say anything. Twenty-four hours had passed. Only a few reports on the church shoot-out. Very few details. Just crazy people in a rural county shooting at each other. Hardly news when there were plenty of crazy people in the big city doing the exact same thing.
No headlines about Charlie—or a murdered cop—yet.
* * *
“You okay? Hey? Can you hear me?”
Charlie’s voice sounded distant, almost a whisper. Hicklin had been sealed in a dream, the same one he’d often had for the past twelve years.
The room was seven by ten feet, the walls painted white. One window with a metal frame. He could never see anything from the window.…
In his dream he lay on the lower bunk. Water was bubbling up from a drain in the floor. It was this sound that made him sit up. He hopped down, bare feet splashing in a few inches of water. He reached up to wake his celly on the top bunk, but Lipscomb was gone …