The warden stood and called for the guard. Michael was led out the door and the warden returned to his window. The wave of nausea he always felt in Michael’s presence soon passed and he was now resolved to go off into the sunset to the condo on the coast.
He had done his duty. He had kept the boy convict safe.
His part in the story was done.
seventy-four
MICHAEL LOOKED DECIMATED as he lay on the bed in Melissa’s motel room. He was a full-grown man, but Melissa had been able to drag him into her car and into the room without too much effort. He was a stick. Though taller than her, his body felt like a child’s. The smell emanating from him was almost unbearable. She didn’t know if it was his usual lot in life to be so disgusting, or if it was the days of hiding out in the woods, the added stench of the house fire. Soon the room was thick with the repugnant odor.
He lay on the bed like a corpse in the county morgue. He was hot to the touch, a fever keeping its hold on him. A few times on the drive over from his burned-down house Michael had mumbled incoherently, but he never gained consciousness. This was for the best, according to Melissa. She didn’t know what would happen if he woke up and started fighting her.
His leg was bloodied. When she examined it closer, she saw what appeared to be a puncture wound above his knee. Though his pants were covered with blood, it appeared that the wound was healing itself. She could feel heat rising from the scar, as if it was being cauterized by an unseen force. She was not a doctor, but what she saw didn’t seem natural.
She kept him tied up. Despite having years to contemplate the idea of exacting revenge on her brother, she soon found herself woefully underprepared. Now, after all these years, here he was. The boogeyman who had killed Marcus.
Her resolve had strengthened again on the drive back.
She walked over and pulled the drapes shut again, not sure if the small crack in between them left an outsider with a full view inside. She walked over to the box, pulled out the gun, and held it in her hand. From across the room she pointed it at Michael.
Melissa’s hands had a slight shake to them. She tried and tried, but she couldn’t seem to hold the weapon steady. She lowered it, walked up to the bed, and placed the barrel against his forehead. He didn’t move, just the slow rise and fall of his rib cage gave proof that he hadn’t already expired. She held the gun, her eyes starting to water, and her anger started to rise. She was angry at this stranger in the bed. She was angry at herself. Coming to the brink a second time and finding herself unable to kill him. Her heart raced and her head pounded with trepidation.
From the bed she grabbed a pillow, placed it over his head, and drove the gun into it. She didn’t want to look at him when she pulled the trigger. She didn’t know if she could live with the image of the violence to be unleashed on his skull. She held the gun in trembling hands.
Her anger quickly turned to shame, shame at herself. Her weakness in not being able to follow through with what she had mentally rehearsed for many years.
She lowered the weapon, dropped it to the floor, and felt the emotional turmoil of all the years flow up inside her and come crashing through. She raised her hands and all the anguish of a lost childhood, a broken family, came pouring out of her and she wept. Her body shook, and as she cried, a feeling in the pit of her stomach began to form. It started as a faint groan and then stirred to a deep nauseous void, threatening to send her heaving to the bathroom.
Melissa reached out her hand and removed the pillow from Michael’s face, and flinched when she saw him.
One eye was partially opened and it looked as if he was staring at her. Sizing her up.
She stared back, shell shocked to finally make connection with her brother.
His face was a tapestry of deep colors. Bruising, both old and more recent, covered his face. Healed scars and fresh cuts. As he lay there, his face looked both villainous and peaceful. Melissa stood, frozen, examining every beaten-down pore of his skin. To her utmost surprise, she felt a feeling creep up inside her that she had never before thought to contemplate.
Here was her brother. Her kin. Her childhood companion. A person who had done things and suffered things that she could not possibly fathom. Her anger, her animosity, slowly seeped out of her veins, and what she felt shocked her. She felt sympathy.
She gazed on her brother, actually looked at him in his most vulnerable state, and saw him as he was before he had murdered Marcus. She had not seen him since he was taken out of the courtroom and sent to prison.
She did not know him anymore. The kid she raged against was no longer there. She had no idea who this man was. Was he the same person? Was he different?
“I know you,” Michael whispered with the labored pains of a broken man, his voice as one from the grave.
She clasped the pillow to her chest as a shield, and simply nodded.
“I . . . I’m . . .” Michael was moving back to the brink of unconsciousness.
“What?” Melissa asked. The pit in her stomach began to fade.
“I’m . . . sorry.” And with that, he was gone again.
Melissa stared at him. She felt empty, hollowed out, as if the burden that had weighed on her heart for as long as she could remember had been lifted off her. Two words breathed into existence a simple thread, a lifeline to guide her back from deep water. To raise her from the pit of sorrow that she had sunk into deeper and deeper since she was a little girl.
She slowly reached down and grabbed the pistol from the floor. The tool suddenly felt foreign to her. Her resolve was shaken. Her determination wiped out. She had lost, and in losing, had freed herself from the bonds of revenge.
Confusion came pouring over her, clouding her mind, and she looked around the room, disoriented, not knowing what to think. This plan had been the guiding star on which she had plotted her course. What now? What was life without this?
Melissa slowly walked across the room and placed the gun back into the box. As she did so, she heard a knock. She turned quickly, expecting to see Michael up and poised to attack her, but he still lay unconscious.
Another knock. It came from the door.
Melissa walked over, composed herself, and with one hand holding the doorknob, she spoke.
“Who is it?”
“It’s me, Lila. Can I come in?”
Melissa unfastened the chain lock and cracked the door to shoo Lila away. What she saw wasn’t the chain-smoking waitress standing outside but a large, hulking figure filling her line of sight. She stood, frozen, as her mind tried to make sense of what she saw. The door came smashing against her face as the shadow kicked it in. Melissa went crashing to the floor in a daze. She had never been hit before and her body was slow to process the sensation.
“Sorry about that,” Haywood said as he stomped into the room.
He grabbed Michael from the bed and dragged him out through the door. Lila came rushing in, yelling at Haywood in some trailer-park dialect of words and phrases that weren’t part of Melissa’s vocabulary. Lila knelt down beside her.
“Are you okay? I had no idea he was going to do that. No idea. He asked me to come with him to talk to you, that’s it. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s alright,” Melissa said as she tried to get to her feet.
“No idea. He’s gone crazy. I’m sorry . . .”
“Lila, it’s okay.”
“Who was that? Who did he drag out of here?”
“Michael.”
“Michael? That was Michael?”
“Yes.”
The sounds of squealing tires were heard as Haywood’s truck pulled out of the parking lot and headed off into the night, with another vehicle close behind.
“I need to know where he is going!” Melissa screamed.
Lila stepped back and held her tongue, an act that seemed both foreign and awkward on her.
“Lila, if you know, tell me. Where are they taking him?”
“Same place. Springer’s Grove. I heard Haywood s
ay it again. They’re taking him back up to Springer’s Grove.”
seventy-five
HAYWOOD AND THE BOYS, the remaining ones, got out of their vehicles. Springer’s Grove was dark, the headlights shone forward like the beam of a grind-house movie theater. Haywood walked to the passenger side and dragged Michael out.
Michael’s head was hooded with a black sack, his hands and legs still bound from when his sister had tied him up. Haywood pulled him out of the vehicle and he fell limp to the ground.
Frank and Earl, Clinton and Davis stood back and watched the scene. None of them attempted to help Haywood pull Michael away from the vehicles and down the path to the burial site. They watched him disappear into the dark and then looked at each other, none of them wanting to take the first step down the trail. Eventually it was Clinton who led, and all the men slowly caught up with Haywood.
They arrived at the spot. The hole in the ground.
Haywood dropped Michael next to it and stretched his back.
“Where’s the shovel?” Haywood said as he looked at the men. “Where is it?”
None of them responded.
“Forget it,” he said, and marched back to the trucks alone.
Four reluctant men, a comatose hostage, a hole in the ground, all left alone waiting for the judge and executioner to come back with a shovel.
“I can’t . . . I can’t do this again,” Earl said.
“He’s gone crazy. Absolutely crazy.”
“What do we do? He’s intent on doing this on his own. He’s far past us now.”
They all knew the score without saying it. If Michael lived, they all would either go to prison if he chose to talk, or they would live in fear of retribution all their lives. If they went against Haywood, who knew what would happen? He was no longer rational. He was borderline insane, driven to the point of obsession. He would not stop until Michael was dead. He would not allow anyone else to get in his way. Over the course of several days they had watched him take one step over the line, then another, and another, until he was at a point where none of them wanted to be.
“This is a chance,” Earl whispered. “This is a chance to do what we should have done the first time. We stop it. We stop this madness. I ain’t blaming anyone for dragging me out here the first time. It was on me. It was on us. We weren’t thinking. But now, now we are. We know full well what we are doing. We do nothing now . . . then we deserve so much more than what we feel right now.”
“Earl’s right,” Frank offered. “This ain’t us. This ain’t never been us.”
Clinton and Davis looked at each other. “Yeah . . . it ain’t.”
“Ain’t what?” Haywood asked. No one had heard him reappear from the trail, and his presence was masked by the darkness. A voice coming out of the deep dark places of the woods. He was answered by silence.
Haywood walked next to the hole in the ground and then handed the shovel to Earl. “Here, start digging.”
“No.”
“What’s that?”
“I said, no. I ain’t doing this.”
“No? You think you have a choice in this? You think you all aren’t up to your necks in this? Here! Dig!”
Earl tried his best not to flinch when Haywood pushed the shovel into him. The tool dropped to the ground in slow motion, a gavel slowly falling in judgment of the group. Earl could feel the nerves firing up inside him, but he held himself together. He wasn’t sure if Frank would follow his lead, he was even less sure of Clinton and Davis. But he was sure he was done. His fear filled him to the brim, but he knew that fear would never leave him if he kept following Haywood. He turned and slowly started walking back to the vehicles.
“Hey!” Haywood yelled. “Where do you think you’re going?”
Earl took another step.
“I said, where do you think you’re going?”
Another gut-wrenching step.
The first blow came as a shock, but his body was trembling so much that it didn’t feel like pain but a blunt force pushing into his back. The second one he was more alert for . . . the punch against the side of his head. Haywood was on him in an instant, and Earl tried his best to protect his face with his arms as the punches rained down on him. He could hear Haywood yelling incoherent insults between each strike. The beating seemed to stretch on in time for Earl, the shock wearing off, replaced by pain. The others joined the scrum and managed to pull Haywood off, but he was an enraged bull, kicking and flailing at Earl.
“You’re not leaving!” he kept screaming.
The boys could not contain Haywood. They were in disbelief themselves, and the rage coursing through Haywood’s body had transformed him into a beast. He was soon out of the grasp of the boys and was heading back to Earl, who lay on the trail trying to get up.
“You are going to finish this, Earl. You going to finish this or I’m going to put you in that grave with him!”
It was then that the dark woods and the sounds of night were pierced by the lightning-bolt crack of a gun. The scene froze. Earl on the ground. Clinton, Davis, and Frank scattered around the clearing, Michael tossed into the leaves and brush, and Haywood’s manic form standing in the middle of it all, his chest heaving with deep breaths of fury. The woods fell silent again.
Melissa stepped down the trail, the lantern catching her eyes like a cat’s in the dark. In her hand was her Glock, and it was pointed straight at Haywood.
“No,” she said calmly. “I’m going to finish this. I’m going to finish this right now.”
seventy-six
WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO? Shoot me? Going to shoot us all?” Haywood asked, his fury not subsiding even with a gun pointed at him.
The rest of the men moved slowly. Frank moved toward Earl and helped him to his feet. The man wobbled and relied on his friend for support. Everyone but Haywood soon found themselves positioned behind Melissa as if she had the sole means of stopping a charging rhino.
The smell of tobacco drifted through the woods and caught Haywood’s nose. His eyes narrowed.
“Lila. You brought her out here? Lila!”
“Yeah, I did,” Lila said, stepping into the dim light.
“You have no idea. None!” Haywood said. “Do you know what this monster has done? You heard about Kyle. About James. And yet here you bring her out here. You come out here to stop me?”
“The only monster I see out here is standing right in front of me,” Lila said as she took another toke, no doubt to calm her nerves. She stepped beside Melissa, who still had the gun outstretched.
Haywood smirked, a sarcastic evil smirk. “You know, boys. We are all in this together. You walk down that trail, you all will have to answer for this. Not just me. All of you. Every single one of you. But right here, we can bury this. We can wipe this stain away.”
“No, Haywood. We can’t,” Frank said. “Ain’t nothing we can do but stop. Stop what we’re doing and go no further.”
The woods fell silent.
“Lila, can you untie Michael?” Melissa said, keeping the weapon trained on Haywood.
The waitress walked over and did as she was asked, wary still of the ex-con comatose in the dirt.
One by one the boys started up the trail. When Lila was done, she turned and helped Frank walk Earl back to the trucks. Clinton and Davis followed until there was just Melissa and Haywood. Michael’s slack body gave no evidence that he was aware of the battle that was waging around him. Melissa stepped aside and, with a wave of the gun, ushered Haywood up the trail.
The light from the lantern over the grave soon dimmed behind them as they walked through the woods until the headlights of the vehicles parked in the clearing took over. Haywood and Melissa emerged from the path to find the company standing facing the lights, all lined up, silent. Melissa squinted her eyes and she could see another vehicle had joined the party. Its driver stood in front of the truck, leaning back against the grill.
As she stepped into the clearing, Melissa could feel her stomach flip o
ver and she felt as if at any moment she could bend over and vomit. A throbbing like a low bass sound began quietly in her head and started to increase in pressure at the base of her skull. She looked at the others and could see that they were feeling the same effects, as if they all had just walked into ground zero of a radioactive blast site.
“By my counting, there is someone missing,” the man said. “The one I’m here for. Don’t tell me he’s run off on you again.”
The man stepped forward, and when he did, the pressure in Melissa’s head deepened.
The man, his face bruised and gashed, took another step and looked over the crowd.
“Now, where’s Michael?”
seventy-seven
THIS IS NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS,” Haywood said.
Melissa could see he was feeling the same odd physical effects that she was—they all were—but his bluster was not diminished in the least.
“No. I suppose not. Point is, I’m here for Michael. You all are of no interest to me. Feel free to get in your trucks and go, just tell me where he’s at and we can all part on good terms.”
“And why would we do that?” Haywood asked.
“Just be thankful I’m not looking for you. I don’t think you’d want that. Now, no more questions. Where is Michael?”
“He’s gone,” Melissa spoke up, gritting her teeth as her head throbbed. “Took off. He’s never coming back.”
“I doubt that, very much.”
“Believe what you want.”
“I don’t need to believe. I know it. I can feel it. Much like you can feel it right now, I suppose,” Nick said as he took another step.
He was toying with her, letting Melissa stew in the growing cancer that was his presence. Melissa raised the pistol, this time with absolute certainty. She had pointed the gun at too many people without the grit to do the deed. Now she felt like a caged animal taunted by an aggressor, the only option but to lash out. As soon as her mind was made up, however, her eyes exploded with a flash of pain and she dropped the gun. Falling to her knees she yelled in pain, blood coming from her nose, the pressure in her face feeling like a mask being pulled too tight.
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