Walk In the Fire

by Steph Post

  Gary looked around the kitchen.

  “Ramey, you keep a power drill charged around here? The pantry maybe?”

  Nash raised his head up as much as he could. His fingers were curled against the sides of the chair as he hollered.

  “Jesus Christ! Everett Weaver! He runs blow and shit all up and down I-95. Jacksonville to Melbourne. Sometimes guns, but he’s smart. He’s got a whole network buying wholesale coke and weed from the beaners, oxys and vikes from the clinics, marking it up, selling it everywhere on the coast.”

  Nash was panting, his voice trilling higher and higher as he spoke. Judah scowled and jerked his chin. Alvin and Gary lifted the back of Nash’s chair and sat him up in front of Judah again. There was a smear of blood on the floor. Judah stared at it and then turned around to Ramey. Her eyes were guarded, but her mouth was set in a hard line.

  “You got a cigarette?”

  Her expression didn’t change, but she finally uncrossed her arms and reached on top of the refrigerator. She took down a soft pack and slid out a cigarette. Ramey dug her lighter out of her pocket and lit it. When she handed it to him, he could see that her shoulders had relaxed just slightly. He turned back to Nash and took a long drag on the cigarette before pointing it in Nash’s direction.

  “Weaver send you to kill me?”

  Nash’s eyes went wide.

  “What? No, no, that’s not it. I promise. I know you don’t want to believe me, but shooting that kid was an accident, I swear. I got this thing, like this anger management thing. They make me go to court-ordered meetings and everything. I’m serious. I got a problem. Honest.”

  Judah blew a stream of smoke in Nash’s face.

  “I can see that. So what’s Weaver want with me?”

  “What’s Weaver want with you? Man, he wants to work with you.”

  Judah narrowed his eyes.

  “And he sent you to tell me that? This guy I’ve never heard of?”

  Nash was squirming.

  “I’d told him before about Sherwood. About how the Cannons got this thing going out in the middle of BFE. The bookies running out of the honkytonk bars. The cigs and the booze and whatever. Good network, low profile, a chance for a lot of money to be made off the pill heads and tweakers. He’d already been talking about expanding west off the coast. Seemed perfect to match both sides up. But Sherwood didn’t want nothing to do with Weaver. So, when he died and you took over, Weaver asked me to talk to you. See if you were interested in going in with him.”

  “That so?”

  “I mean it. It’s a good deal on both sides. A great deal.”

  Judah pulled the brown glass ashtray in the middle of the table toward him.

  “And let me guess. You’d be the bridge between us.”

  Nash nodded emphatically.

  “That was the idea.”

  Judah rolled the edge of his cigarette along the rim of the ashtray.

  “A win-win-win, huh?”

  Nash dropped his head.

  “’Course, I guess you don’t want nothing to do with me now.”

  “With you? No.”

  Judah took one last drag off his cigarette and then crushed it out.

  “Where can I find Weaver?”

  Nash shook his head.

  “Well, see, it’s not that easy. He’s smart, like I said. Never in one place for too long.”

  Judah cast his eyes up toward Alvin and nodded. Nash began frantically twisting in his chair again.

  “But I think he’s in Daytona! Last time I talked to him, when I told him about you taking over the Cannons and all, he had just gotten to Daytona Beach. He’s probably doing some business there. He usually stays a few weeks in one city before moving on to the next.”

  Judah leaned in close.

  “You got a phone number?”

  “No. He’s always got different phones and shit. It’s like, he calls you. You don’t call him. But I can tell you some of his joints in Daytona. There’s a couple of girly clubs he owns. And a few bars. I know the clubs: Stingrays and The Pink Pelican. You go there and I’m sure you’ll be able to find him. He wants to work with you, remember? He wants to meet you.”

  Judah looked back over his shoulder at Ramey. She had a lit cigarette herself, but only shrugged her shoulders as she exhaled a stream of smoke. Judah turned around and glanced down the table at Benji. He was staring straight ahead and didn’t seem to be following the conversation at all. Judah turned back to Nash and put his elbow on the edge of the table.

  “How close are you with Weaver?”

  Judah could see Nash weighing the question, trying to determine Judah’s meaning. He spoke warily.

  “Not too close.”

  Judah smacked his hand on the table and stood up. He nodded to Alvin and Gary.

  “That settles it, then. Boys, he’s all yours. You want to go all MacGyver on him, it’s fine by me. But do it outside, okay? We already got enough to clean up in here.”

  Alvin put his heavy hand on Nash’s shoulder and Nash almost shrieked.

  “Okay, I lied. I lied! I’m important to Weaver. I’m somebody, goddamn it! You let these psychos kill me and Weaver’ll never work with you. You’ll have screwed up his dealings in Putnam County and he’s not just going to forgive you for that. That’s a lot of money you’ll have cost him. Think about it, Judah! Just stop and think about it, for Christ’s sake!”

  Judah crossed his arms and regarded Nash, bloody, sweating, his eyes near about to bug out of his head. He knew what Ramey wanted him to do. Despite Benji’s silence, he knew what his brother wanted, too. But Judah wasn’t so sure either of them were thinking the way they needed to be. The Cannons couldn’t afford to waver any longer. They couldn’t afford to be weak. He couldn’t afford to be weak. Judah looked down at Nash and considered his future.

  “I am thinking about it.”

  SISTER TULAH eyed the heap of Nesquik on her spoon before dumping the powder into her glass. She added another and then began to stir, watching the milk turn a creamy shade of light brown. The mixture had to be just right. She tapped the edge of the spoon on the glass and raised it so she could make sure the Nesquik had all dissolved. Satisfied, she grunted to herself and carried the glass into her study on the other side of the house.

  She crossed through the empty dining room with its three tortured portraits of Jesus weeping for the sins of the world. Tulah stopped at the sideboard and inspected her collection of Hummel figurines, seeking out any motes of dust. Since Felton had moved out of the house to live next to his den of serpents, Tulah had been forced to hire a cleaning woman. She lumbered around the enormous walnut dining table and passed through the dark living room, pausing to lift up a few pieces of her displayed collector plates to check for dust underneath the wire stands. Sister Tulah scowled as she straightened the angle of her prized Bradford Exchange Gone with the Wind plate on the top shelf of the curio cabinet. Felton had known exactly how to clean each piece and how exactly to put it back. This new woman, the daughter of Sister Edith, hadn’t paid enough attention to Tulah’s precise instructions. She wasn’t worried about the woman stealing from her, there was no fear of that, but she was concerned about her level of competency.

  Sister Tulah sighed. If only Felton would come back to live in his room at the top of the stairs. Two weeks after the church fire, and after he had clobbered that beast Sherwood Cannon over the head with the cross, Felton had announced to her that he had bought another silly little tin camper and was moving out. At the time, she had sneered at him and told him to go ahead, knowing he wouldn’t last a week. But apparently Felton’s new setup was somewhat habitable and he seemed content to live in his sardine can and only bother with maintaining the church. Tulah pursed her lips. He was trying to make a statement. To gain some sort of independence from her, and Sister Tulah wasn’t going to have it. As soon as she returned, she would take him in hand and lead him back down the necessary path of complacency.

  Confident that every
thing was in its proper place, Sister Tulah entered her study and locked the door behind her. She settled herself into the oxblood wingback chair and placed the glass of settling chocolate milk on the massive oak desk in front of her. Tulah reached for a tall, dark green bottle sitting on the edge of the desk and squeezed the plastic bulb of the glass dropper. Being careful not to spill a single drop, she held it over her glass and let three clots of the sticky, oozing mixture splash into the milk. Sister Tulah quickly replaced the dropper and took up a long silver spoon, stirring the milk into a vicious whirlpool. She raised the glass to her lips and drank while the milk was still swishing around in the glass. With her eye closed and her face scrunched, she forced herself to swallow. When the glass was empty, she slammed it down, panting, and shoved it away from her.

  There was nothing on earth worse than the taste of the Mithridatium. Over the years, she had tried to improve upon the ancient recipe, passed down from her grandmother, but in having to get the exact ratios of all fifty-two ingredients correct when she concocted the mixture, taste often fell by the wayside. A quarter of a gram one way or the other would have her convulsing on the floor and foaming at the mouth. Fiddling with the right amount of myrrh was one thing, but wolfsbane and arsenic weren’t so forgiving.

  Sister Tulah smacked her lips and tried not to retch as she reached under her desk and pressed a hidden lever. A drawer shot out and Tulah leaned over, picking through the layers of paper until she found the account ledger she was looking for. She opened the unassuming green record book to the page with the most recent entries and used her thick finger to trace down the columns of strange dots and dashes.

  Ingesting the antidote every night for six months leading up to the second Sunday in August was essential if she wanted to survive drinking the Lotan, but none of it mattered if she wouldn’t be able to actually attend. Sister Tulah had been faithfully paying her five thousand dollar tithes every month for the past three years, but now she had to make sure she had enough for the final offering. Regardless of the strength of her devotion, she still had to levy a hundred grand to secure her rightful place. Since Tulah had taken over the Last Steps Church from her grandfather, putting the money together had never been a problem. But the events of May had taken their toll. All those palms greased in Tallahassee and yet she’d still lost the phosphate deal when her fifty thousand was stolen, first by Sherwood Cannon and then from him, or so he had claimed, and she couldn’t fork over the final bribe in time. In the grand scheme of things, fifty thousand dollars was a mere drop in the bucket, but the trail of damage left by it was considerable. Loaning money to that imbecile biker Jack Austin was the most foolhardy decision she had ever made and in the end she’d paid for it with her church, her eye and, ultimately, the mine that would have made her millions. And then, after all that, as if she hadn’t lost enough in the fire, there were the never-ending payoffs to the sheriff and the fire marshal. To the local press to spin the story the right way. It was ridiculous how much money had flowed through her hands like water through a sieve.

  And now there was this federal agent trying to stir things up. He had seemed innocuous at first, but Tulah could smell it coming. Agent Grant was staying too long in Kentsville and asking too many questions. He had even approached Felton, for God’s sake, looking to poke holes in the account of Sherwood’s death. Well, she was at an end with her indulgent ways, with the checks slipped between handshakes and boxes of cash left by back doors. When Sister Tulah had lost her eye, she knew she had lost some of her power over the people who feared her. They saw her bandaged face and the ruins of her church and thought she had loosened her iron grip on them. In the aftermath of the disaster, it had simply been easier to use the carrot in place of the stick. But if anyone thought she was going soft, they had another thing coming. Once she returned, she would remind them all of who she really was and what she could really do. And if Special Agent Grant was still poking around, she’d go for his throat first.

  Sister Tulah scanned the rows and columns of code, adding up the math in her head. She took a stubby pencil from the silver tray at the edge of her desk and licked the tip of it before adding in three dots and two dashes at the bottom of the page. Brother Cary had called her that evening and given her another update on the one eleven account. She marked it in and then went over the column again. And then once more. Finally, she tossed the pencil down and clasped her hands together on the desk. It would be enough. Just barely, but enough. And the eventual return would be tenfold. Sister Tulah smiled to herself. She would be going to The Recompense. She would be going home to God.

  “I WAS just trying to protect you.”

  “Don’t.”

  Judah was hoping Ramey would turn to him, would at least look at him, but her eyes were fixed outside the second story window. The moon was heavy, almost full, and lighting up the backyard expanse of scruffy tufts of grass and patches of sandy dirt. The family who had rented the house before them, or maybe before, or before, must have had kids. A bent swing set frame, sagging beneath the stranglehold of greenbriers, stood back where the thick woods began to creep up toward the house and the moonlight glittered off the rusting metal. Judah leaned his shoulder against the wall, trying to catch Ramey’s eye.

  “I’m serious.”

  She still wouldn’t look at him.

  “Well, what do you know? I am, too. We’re quite a pair, huh?”

  It was hard, just standing next to her in the darkness of the bedroom. Ramey’s palms were pressed against the glass, her fingers curling over the middle rail, and all he wanted was to put his hand on hers. To feel his fingers fall into place. Judah knew that hand, the white flecks under the nails and the way the pinky bowed out slightly. He knew her hands and he knew her body. The scars tracking across her lower stomach and left hip. The tattoo between her shoulder blades that she liked and the one on her ankle that she didn’t. The chipped front tooth that had never kept her from smiling. He knew that she liked her coffee bitter and her whiskey straight. That she slept with her lips slightly parted. Had a soft spot for strays. Couldn’t carry a tune to save her life. And didn’t have time for bullshit.

  Judah rammed his fists down into pockets. He knew all of these things, and so many more, but at the moment he didn’t know Ramey’s mind. Didn’t know her heart. And it was his own damn fault.

  “That we are.”

  Ramey drummed her fingers against the glass.

  “Where is Nash now?”

  “In the shed. Gary’s keeping an eye on him.”

  Ramey turned to him, keeping one hand on the rail, picking away at a splinter with her nails.

  “And you’re really gonna do this?”

  Judah pulled his hands out of his pockets, but still didn’t reach for her.

  “Look, I don’t buy half of Nash’s story—”

  “I don’t buy most of it.”

  “—but if I’m in any way on Weaver’s radar, then I need to meet him. Size him up. See what’s what.”

  Ramey’s eyes narrowed.

  “Why?”

  “Why?”

  “Yes, why. Why are you going to Daytona, trying to find some guy you know nothing about? Nash is lying about something, but who knows which part? This Weaver could’ve never heard of you; he could want to kill you. Shoot you on sight. You just don’t know.”

  Judah shook his head.

  “Ramey, I’ll be fine.”

  Ramey’s voice exploded in the darkness. She slammed her palms into his chest. Not as hard as she could, but hard enough.

  “I know you’ll be fine!”

  Judah stepped back, more startled by her tone than by the blow. She went to push him again and he caught her wrists.

  “Ramey.”

  There weren’t quite tears in her eyes, but there was something. Frayed. Raw-edged.

  “I know you’ll be fine! You’re always fine. But just tell me why the hell you’re doing this.”

  Judah tried to keep his voice steady.

/>   “With Weaver?”

  “With all of it!”

  She wrenched away from him and he let her go. Ramey stalked across the room, but then whipped back around to him.

  “This ain’t only about Lesser. Or Nash and Weaver for that matter. It’s more than that.”

  Judah tried to keep his voice steady. He couldn’t let her see him falter.

  “No.”

  But Judah knew the answer was yes. And he knew that Ramey knew. And that flayed him down to the core. She crossed her arms and looked away from him.

  “This is about you. You keep saying it’s about others. Justice for Lesser. Taking care of Benji. Protecting me. Whatever the hell that entails.”

  Judah could feel his voice rising, matching hers. Both in volume and in spitting bitterness.

  “It is about you! About all of you. What do you think I’m doing? Why do you think I’m doing everything, every goddamn thing I can to take care of this family?”

  Ramey flung her arms out wide.

  “I don’t know!”

  Judah suddenly brought his voice down, low and dangerous.

  “Well, if you have to keep asking, I guess you don’t know me at all.”

  Judah couldn’t bear to look at her. She knew. She could see the lurking, hulking hydra of ambition and hubris, of penitence and doubt, coiling itself around his heart. But she wanted to shoot an arrow into the belly of the monster; Judah knew that its many mouths had already bitten him too deeply. He could not be released.

  “I’m leaving in the morning. First thing.”

  He clenched his fists and walked away.

  Ramey let the back screen door clatter and slam behind her. The top of the washing machine was open and she glanced inside as she walked through the laundry room. A bloody T-shirt, most likely Gary’s or Alvin’s, had been thrown onto a heap of dirty, greasy jeans and twisted up boxer shorts. Ramey didn’t even stop. She went into the kitchen, washed her hands furiously and braced herself against the sink.

  “This is ridiculous.”

  “You’re telling me.”

  Ramey shook her hands and turned around to Benji. He was seated at the kitchen table, his pill bottles lined up in front of him like toy soldiers. Ramey leaned back against the edge of the counter top.