by Tim McGregor
They grunted and heaved and kept moving. Berryhill’s legs like spastic clubs as the dipping willow leaves raked their hot faces. Staggering uphill until they came upon the little family graveyard. Six low stones and the big monument toppled and broken on the ground.
Puddycombe tripped over a headstone and they all went down. The injured man taking the worst of it. Puddy wheezed, his face pink. “I can’t carry him.”
“Get up,” Jim ordered. Noble words, he could barely stand himself.
Bill swore and groaned. “Don’t leave me.”
The barkeep shook his head, refusing to move. Jim snarled at him to get on his feet.
Puddycombe got up too fast and staggered backwards with pinpricks of white beguiling his eyes. A loud snap. And then the screaming.
Puddy dropped like a sack of dirt, clawing at his ankle. Screeching in hot pain, flailing his arms. The rusty jaws of the bear trap vised around his shin. Iron teeth cutting to the bone.
“Get it off! Jesuschrist Get it off!”
Jim gaped stupidly. It looked unreal, some Wiley Coyote cartoon made real. Puddy’s screams snapped him back to life and he pulled at the iron jaws. No give whatsoever. Tight as death. “I can’t get it open.”
“Pry it off! Shoot it off! I don’t care.”
Bill and Jim tugged and strained but their bare hands were no match for the iron vise and they had nothing to pry it open with. The tire iron that Puddy had was gone, lost in the weeds somewhere. Jim slid the barrel of the shotgun through the jaws but had no way to pry it open, no leverage to work off of.
There was nothing to do and Puddycombe read it in their eyes. “No,” he pleaded. “No no no no.”
Jim took up the chain and followed the links to where it was anchored to the ground. Pulling and straining against it until the spike plucked free and Jim fell back on his ass. He dropped the chain into Puddy’s hands. “You’ll have to run with it.”
“Are you fucking crazy! I can’t even stand!”
The snap of a twig. Footfalls, somewhere in the dark. “Rub a dub dub, gentlemen.”
A glowing haze of light floating in the pitch. Corrigan bled out of the night with the lantern in hand like some nightmarish railwayman.
Jim dove for cover as Corrigan swung and fired from the hip. A red hot blast ripped into his good leg, his buttock. Hot and searing like a thousand bee stings.
Puddycombe bore the brunt of it. The skin flayed from his cheek, flapping wet and free. His back shredded to exposed meat. Pinholes of gunblack against red muscle tissue.
Berryhill took his share of spray. He lay face down in the clover making an ungodly noise.
Jim rolled up and popped onto his knees, drawing the Mossberg up fast and outgunning Corrigan. Faster than fucking Eastwood, getting the drop on the murderous sonofabitch.
Corrigan bristled, his gun frozen at the half cock.
Jim’s heart knocked into his throat. He wanted to spit words at him, something matching his rage but his brain emptied of all but the most banal words and comforting curses.
“Go to hell.”
Corrigan’s hand shot up to ward off the blast. A useless instinct. Jim pulled the trigger—
Click.
The sound all wrong. No righteous blast, no redeeming kick to the shoulder. He squeezed harder but nothing would move the trigger piece. Load fail. Gun jam. Death.
Glee stitched across Corrigan’s mouth. “Misfire.”
31
“DIG TWO GRAVES,” his father had told him once. “If it’s revenge you’re planning, dig two graves.”
Of all the bullshit, liquor-sodden advice his father had doled out to him, and there had been plenty, this one bonmot came rushing back to Jim now, of all times. The last time his father had hit him, a stinging backhand across the mouth when Jim was sixteen. Instead of taking the punishment as usual, Jim had snatched up a shovel with pure murder in his heart. And then his father’s warning about revenge needing two graves.
The old man was right.
It galled him to admit it but Jim had no other choice, staring down the barrels of the shotgun. At Corrigan, ready to blow his head clean off. He should have dug two graves. Maybe more. Puddycombe lay sprawled over his feet, bleeding out from the catastrophe of his head. He should have dug poor Puddy’s grave too.
His leg stung like a son of a bitch and Corrigan kept talking, yammering on about something. What the hell was he saying? Maybe the man intended to talk him to death.
“Jimmy.” Corrigan’s voice pierced through the white hum, foul and obscene. “Put the gun down.”
Jim looked down at the shotgun in his hands, surprised it was still there. He lifted a hand up in compliance. Everything screamed at him not to let go of the gun, useless as it was. What else was there? He forced his fingers to relax their grip. The Mossberg clunked to the earth, a dead stick of metal and wood.
“Get on your knees.”
The last humiliation of the condemned. Prostrate, made to beg for your life. He thought of Emma and Travis and how they would be alone. Crying for help when the end came and he wouldn’t be there. Left behind to pay the levy for his sins.
Jim didn’t move. What was the point?
A moan, low and guttural. Berryhill, forgotten in the moment, crawled away. Fingers scratching at the dirt, dragging his dead puppet legs.
Corrigan watched the pathetic escape. “Like the slug you are, Mister Berryhill.” He lowered the barrel and aimed the bores at Bill’s head.
“No!” Jim faltered forward, stupidly waving his hands like he was flagging a bus. “Don’t—”
The crack split Jim’s ear, the boom of the gun echoing over the field. Berryhill’s head was a smashed pumpkin, broken inwards to wet pulp.
Corrigan looked at the mess, frowning at the gore sprayed over his boot. He wiped it in the grass and then swung the shotgun back to bear on his captive.
Jim was already running.
Sprinting blind, knees jerking and popping over the uneven terrain. Divots and gopher holes ready to snap a leg or twist an ankle. He tripped over an anthill and tumbled into the corn stalks.
Get up, get up, get up.
Another blast from the shotgun. Back there, but not aimed at him.
Puddycombe.
His leg was on fire, leaking bad and slowing him down but he kept running. The ancient stone fence rose into view. He swung his bleeding leg over and fell to the far side. Looked back the way he came.
Corrigan trudging through the field after him, lantern swinging in his hand.
He looked west. A speckle of light peeked through the chestnut trees. The last thing he wanted was to lead the crazed gunman to his home but there was nowhere else to go.
He moved on, limping and falling in the dark, the lights of the house guiding him. Maybe Emma was gone, packing Travis into the truck and driving to Norm’s. He could barricade the house, call the police. Pray that they got here in time.
Corrigan had fired both barrels. How many hulls did he have in his pocket? He glanced back and saw the twinkle of the lantern. Pixie light moving through the dark. He didn’t look back again.
Tangling in the chokecherry bush, he pitched forward and tumbled onto his lawn. The lone bulb of the porch light left on.
The truck was still in the driveway.
He collided into the backdoor and bounced off of it. Forgetting that he told her to lock it. He banged on the glass. “Emma! Open the door.”
The window went dark. Didn’t she know it was him? Jim looked back the way he came. No sign of Corrigan, no ghostly light in the dark fields.
He pounded the wood and didn’t stop, cursing Emma to open the door. When the lock turned he almost knocked her to the floor getting inside.
Emma stopped cold when she saw his face. Flecked with blood, the raw panic in his eyes. “What happened?”
“Where’s Travis?” His eyes worked the room but couldn’t find his son.
“You’re bleeding.”
“Travis!
”
“God, sit down. Let me see that.” Emma pulled a chair close but he waved it away. If he sat down now he wouldn’t get up.
“We have to get out of here.” He grabbed her shoulder to stay upright. “You drive.”
Travis ran into the room and looked out the window. “What’s going on?”
“Get away from the window!”
The window exploded over Travis’s head. A brick bounced and banged across the floor. Broken glass everywhere. Everyone on their knees. Emma pulled the boy to her, hands through his hair looking for cuts.
Travis pulled away, gaping at the shattered window. “What was that?”
Jim killed the lightswitch. “Stay down.”
The boom of a shotgun blast outside the house. Then another.
Jim inched up over the broken window sill. Two tires on the pickup were shot out, flat and dead. Corrigan broke the shotgun and reloaded. Calm and unhurried. Out duck hunting on a chill October day.
Emma’s hands pulled him back. “Get away from there.”
He pushed Travis towards the hallway. “Keep down. Out the back”
Exactly where they would go, he didn’t have a clue. Hiding inside wasn’t an option, the bastard would just blast his way in. And then where would they be?
Doubled over, Emma crabbed to the kitchen. The backdoor left open. From there, they could run straight into the fields where Jim knew the terrain. At the very least they could hide in the dark, all night if they had to. Make their way up the road when it was safe.
The kitchen window burst over their heads. The lantern hurled inside and shattered on the linoleum. Kerosene splattered over the kitchen, igniting instantly. Flames traced the fuel across the floor, licked up the walls. The old curtains blazed up, curling and blackening in a toxic stink.
They backpedalled away in a panic like swimmers spotting a jellyfish. Back to the front door, Jim leading the way but stopping short, Emma knocking into his back. A shadow filled the window in the front door. It jostled from a hard kick.
“Down!” Jim lunged at the basement door and flung it back. Wooden steps leading down. There was nowhere else to run.
The hallway between them and the kitchen was already a rectangle of fire.
~
Corrigan stood in the grass looking up at the house. The flames in the window glimmered up his dark eyes. The farmhouse was shabby and old, almost as old as his own house. Renovations and repairs overtop a dryrot skeleton of post and beam.
It would burn nicely.
He went around to the front and up the porch steps. The picture window a gaping mouth of shattered teeth. The door was locked, that was expected. Resting the stock against his hip he raised the barrels square at the knob. It incinerated under the gun blast. A gaping maw of splintered wood and gunblack. It kicked in easily.
There would be no reprieve for old Jim this night. The son of a whore had tried to kill him and you couldn’t let people get away with things like that.
What would the neighbours think?
~
Travis pulled the chain overhead, popping the dusty bulb on and making everyone blind. Jim snapped it off again. The darkness was total until their pupils shuttered all the way open.
“What now?”
“Quiet.”
They listened to the crackle of fire in the kitchen. Then the report of the shotgun, shaking the timbers of the house. The sound of the door being kicked open.
The thud of boots overhead. He was inside.
Travis’s chest was heaving. He never did well with dusty rooms and now dust salted down from the unfinished ceiling, dripping from the floor joists at the boots stomping across their floor. He looked at his dad. “Is he gonna kill us?”
“No,” Jim said. He felt Emma’s eyes but he couldn’t look at her. “No, he’s not.” Lie or no, there wasn’t any other answer to give.
~
Corrigan stalked into the parlour. Empty, he moved on. A closed door near the hallway, a closet or a room he didn’t know. He kicked it open and fired blind. Cans blew off wooden shelves, preserve jars exploded. Nothing more.
Pressing on. The doorway into the kitchen was orange with flames. Another closed door on his left. Same routine. He booted it open and let the shotgun rip. Paper and books somersaulted. A cramped office, also empty.
He unhinged the shotgun and reloaded. One more closed door, then the stairs leading to the second floor. Choices. If they were upstairs, he would simply let them burn.
“Jim! Come out!” Snapping the rifle closed, he took another step towards the kitchen. The heat rolling out from the back of the house toasted his cheek, like peering into the grate of a blast furnace.
“Come out, Jimmy! Come out and I’ll spare the woman and the boy!”
~
Emma covered her ears at each report of the gun. The three of them huddled in the dark, listening to the man blast his way through their house. She looked at Jim as they heard the ultimatum. Travis’s eyes darted between his parents and the basement door.
Jim stumbled through the dark to the window on the north wall. The only one in the basement, and so small. Travis the only one that might slither through. He tugged the handle but the frame wouldn’t budge. The old house had settled, trapping the pane in the sill.
Emma groped around for a tool. A brick, anything. “Here.” She handed up a short metal pipe from a stack on the floor.
“Look away.” Jim smashed out the glass, bashing out the shards along the pane as best he could. Dropping the pipe, he cupped his hands together for a foothold. “Travis, up you go.”
Travis eyed the narrow slot. “You can’t fit through there.”
“Run for help,” Jim said. “Keep away from the house. Take the creek back to Meyerside’s farm.”
The boy shook his head at what his dad was asking. “No.”
“Don’t argue, Travis!” Emma stifled the panic squeezing her heart. “Just go.”
“Go on, son.” Jim thrust out his cupped hands, urging the boy to step in. “We’ll be right behind you.”
“No you won’t.” Travis backed away. The look in their eyes was alien. Possessed.
Emma’s voice broke, hitching up in sobs. “Travis, please.”
The basement door burst open. Boots thudding on the steps and firelight arcing down the wall.
“Jimbo…”
Travis felt his collar yanked hard. Emma pulled him sideways and shoved him into a dark niche behind a shelf. A narrow rabbit hole, she pushed and folded her son inside. Hissed at him to be quiet.
Bootheels rang off the wooden steps.
Emma scrambled for somewhere to hide but nothing presented itself. She ducked behind the meat freezer and coiled up small as she could. Her hands were empty, nothing to defend herself with. No hammer or axe. Nothing within reach now.
Jim scrambled for the pipe he’d used on the window and gripped it tight. A foot and a half of cast iron, an inch in diameter. A caveman’s club against twin bores of twelve gauge horror. The metal was cool in his sweaty hands and he couldn’t get a solid grip on it.
He slid behind the metal shelf of sleeping bags and a six-man tent that still had the tags on it. A camping trip he had promised Travis. Bass fishing up in the Lake of Bays, where an uncle had taken him fishing as a boy. Another broken promise to be stacked up with the others. Lies and half-truths. Promises made heedlessly just to end a conversation or stifle a tantrum.
The footsteps stopped. A silhouette towered at the bottom of the stairs, backlit against the flames arcing down the doorway. The rifle in hand, squinting into the blackness.
Jim ducked low, raking the end of a fishing pole against his ear.
“Travis come out!” Corrigan slurred forward. “You and your mother can leave. Your father and I need to talk.”
Jim strained his eyes into the shadow where his son was hiding. He saw nothing of the boy but he could feel Travis holding his breath. Fighting himself to remain absolutely still.
C
orrigan cocked his ear, listening for sounds above the crack and pop of the fire. “Quickly son! Before the flames get us.”
The shadow where Travis nested spilled noise. A crinkle. Shoes scraping the gritty concrete. Corrigan angled his ear towards it, triangulating the source in the darkness.
Jim was sure the man could hear his heart clanging in his chest, it was that loud. Could Corrigan see them hiding like kids in a pathetic bluff of blind men? Jim shifted the pipe to his left hand and smeared his right palm against his jeans.
Corrigan skulked in. Called out to him in the dark. “Did she tell you, Jimmy? Did your wife tell you what we did?”
Barbed and sharp, ripping through his chest like the dirty nail that tore up his back. Jim tried to squeeze the words back out of his ears. Don’t listen to him. He’s trying to goad you out into the open. Don’t listen.
Like telling a drowning man not to swim. His knuckles turned white over the pipe. He clocked Emma across the room, squeezed up against the freezer. She was looking right at him, the terror naked in her face. She was shaking her head, silently communicating the same words in his head. Don’t listen.
“She’s soft as a kitten, she is.” Corrigan wouldn’t let up, knowing which buttons to push. The shotgun bolstered against his hip. “She’s a fighter, I’ll give you that but oh my…”
Shut up shut up shut up
“…she knows how to fuck a man dry.”
There was no doubt how this would turn out. And everyone in that hot dark space knew it.
Jim sprang from his hidey-hole, swinging the pipe overhead. In his mind, an image of Corrigan’s skull split down the middle like a pumpkin.
Corrigan blocked the strike with the rifle but felt Jim tumble into him. The barrel knocked against Jim’s jaw and Corrigan pulled the trigger. The buckshot hooked Jim’s ear and shredded it clean off. The noise ruptured the tympanic membrane but his momentum carried him forward, crashing Corrigan into a cabinet.