Greg nodded. “We’re spending the night.”
“Bullshit. The plan was for us all to get out of here. Why the hell would you stay? So I can bury another body? So I can be totally on my own?”
“We are not having this discussion now.” “The hell we aren’t.”
“Henry, now you listen to me.” The way he said it told me he wasn’t going to move. “I may be a good-for-nothing and I can live with that. But I can’t live with you getting hurt. Understand, the only way for you to go on is by me clearing a path for you. I tried to do it for you when you was little, and things didn’t turn out at all like I wanted them to. But now I got a gun in my hand and a chance to do right by you and Janie. Hear me? This ain’t for you, it’s for me. So get. I’ll see you all back home.”
Greg said, “I hear them.”
“Go,” my dad said. “We’ll be fine. Take care of your girl. You two better get around the mountain before the beans burn. Hear me?”
Greg fired a shot. The sound echoed off the cliff. My ears rang, and I tried to shake it out. I walked over to Alex. “Hey,” I said.
From the other side of the rock Lewis’s men cursed and yelled. It sounded like Greg had winged one.
“I can’t let this happen.” I pointed at my dad and Greg. “I can’t. I ain’t fixing to bury another family member.”
Alex nodded. She looked scared.
“You head on up to the truck, okay? I’m going to get them to chase me.” I checked the chamber to make sure there was a round in there. “I’m going with you.” She stood up and grabbed my hand. “Alex. No—”
“I’m not doing anything different than you’re doing to your dad. I’m the one they followed into Pennsylvania and back down here. I can protect you.” She held up the envelope.
“No, please.” I let go of her hand.
“When somebody reaches a hand out to you, you take it.” She was mad.
“This is dangerous. They’re not playing.”
“I’m dangerous.” She started to walk. “And I’m going to have a little fun with it.”
We edged toward the trees that sat adjacent to the cliff. It was a short drop, only about six feet or so. I handed Alex my rifle and climbed down. Once I had my feet beneath me, I let her pass me the rifle and her envelope. Then I directed her to use my shoulder like a step.
“You sure about this?” I said.
“Don’t ask me again, okay?”
I took her hand and led her down toward the stream. The laurel was thinner here, replaced by ferns and a thick layer of old leaves. The trees were too big and too high to let enough light to the forest floor for much else to grow. We moved faster and easier than we had all day. Our feet made no sound at all as we pounded over the soft ground. At the bottom we picked our way through rocks to get right up to the edge of the water. My dad’s roost on the cliff was hidden from me by trees, but I could see Charlie’s guys waiting on the other side of the bend. I wasn’t certain, but it looked like they were going to keep my dad and Greg pinned down.
I watched, trying to figure out what they were doing.
“C’mon,” Alex said, pulling me downstream.
“Wait.” I listened. I put my finger up to my lips. “Where are the rest?”
Alex pointed. “They’re starting to cross.”
At the crest of the lower waterfall I could see Darren and a bunch of guys working back up the slope to the trail we hiked in on, like they were going to flank my dad and Greg. Charlie sat on the beach, yelling in short coughs.
“They’re going to fire on dad and Greg from the other side,” I said, trying to see how close they were. “Once they’re out of the way Ben and my pap won’t stand a chance.”
From where my old man sat, he could have no idea they were setting up to pick them off. “I got to warn them.”
“Just shoot them.” Alex pointed to the guys on the cliff. She shuffled through the papers in her envelope. “They’d kill you without a second thought.”
I raised the scope to my eye, but couldn’t aim for my breathing. I found a tree to lean against and dropped to one knee. “Don’t hesitate. Don’t even think. They won’t hit you.” She started to mumble words with no melody. Just monotone, unrelated syllables.
I put my eye to the scope, found a man in the reticle, closed my eyes and squeezed the trigger.
He fell backwards in a splatter of blood. One of the other men caught him and dragged him into the laurel. The first two men to retreat to the laurel fired on me from cover, but their shots never came close.
“Holy shit, I got him,” I said. Remorse filled my nose like smoke, entered my head and crept into my gut. I held the gun out. “I killed him, Alex. I can’t believe it, he’s dead—”
I reloaded and aimed again. Finding a target was much easier this time. I squeezed the trigger and wounded a second man. You fucking animal. Way to rise above.
Gunfire came from both sides of the stream now. Charlie’s men fired on me and Alex and my dad and Greg from the trees to my left. My dad and Greg fired back across the stream from above us to the right. I hoped that meant he was pulling away from the bottleneck.
I reloaded. I took aim. I found the red of a Lewis Lumber hat in the laurel. “Don’t stop,” Alex said. “They shot Katy.”
Bullets zipped through the leaves by my head. I ducked behind a big old hemlock. “Why didn’t you tell me? You had no right to keep that from me.”
“They took her in an ambulance. You would’ve wanted to go back and we need to keep them out here. Rachael said this is the only way we win. Keeping them out here, away from the real world.”
I stepped out from behind the tree. I didn’t know where my faith came from—maybe anger. I shot into the laurel. I knew they’d retreated. I reloaded and shot again.
“I’m out.” I leaned the rifle against the tree. I still had Ben’s pistol, but they were too far away.
Gunshots rang down from the trees above us. There were no more from our side, from my dad and Greg.
Alex said, “They went to the trucks. Don’t worry.”
I nodded. “How pissed is Levon going to be when he realizes I ain’t back there waiting with them?”
“Now what?” she said, ignoring my moment of celebration. “Time to run.”
She grabbed my hand. I pulled her along the stream, over downed trees and through twisted rhododendron. Lewis’s men continued to shoot from the trail on the other side of the stream. Their shots went high. The tall cliff across the stream sheltered us from their vantage. We seemed to be safe as long as we didn’t stray from the stream. I kept looking over my shoulder for a sign of their location.
For another five or ten minutes the moving was easy. A wide flood plain with a lot of open space between the trees. We put a lot of distance between ourselves and the posse. I tried to figure out where they were based on what I could remember from our trip up the trail this morning. All I could say for certain was that they were behind us.
“How you holding up?” I asked. “Fine.”
“Still feel okay to keep moving?”
“I’ll let you know when I can’t go on.”
The boulders grew, and the moving got slower as the cliff on our side of the stream steepened. The walls got closer to the water again, reminding me of High Falls Rapid on the Cheat. The narrow gorge eventually choked after another quarter mile, forcing us to wade. At a few locations the walls of the gorge were so close together that sunlight didn’t even hit the bottom. Waterfalls and springs trickled in from both sides intermittently. Ferns grew all around some of the seeps, like little ecosystems in miniature.
Cold, waist-deep water shook the ache right out of my legs. I helped Alex find footing on the slippery bottom, basically holding her and acting like a second set of legs against the gentle push of the water. The static hiss of falls and rapids made good noise cover.
We moved fast. The current did a nice job of pushing us along, and the little bit of buoyancy helped my aching feet. Because of the way the st
ream moved, we occasionally had to swim to the other side, or climb over a ledge to avoid the main flow. Whenever we swam, I held Alex’s envelope and Ben’s pistol over my head to keep them dry. Had a lot of practice at that when I videoed rafting trips.
We climbed to shore on the inside of a real tight bend. The trail was directly overhead, so there’d be no way for them to see us. Alex shivered. I held her, to warm her. She said, “If this is safe, why don’t we stay here?”
I thought about it for a long time, but didn’t answer. I wanted to stop, too. “Henry.”
My reply took a long time to fully form. “If we stop they’ll cut us off downstream. If they get their shit together they can surround us. We’d be trapped.”
She buried her head in my chest.
“But we can rest. For a few minutes,” I said. I could’ve slept for a week.
Every time I closed my eyes I nodded off. The cold water had sapped my energy. I fought to keep them open for a long time. I realized I’d failed when Alex woke me.
“Hey.”
“What?” I jerked myself up. Adrenaline made my heart pump, like when you spook a turkey.
Without any other sort of transition, Alex let out a long breath, stood up and asked, “So tell me about the rattlesnakes?”
The tone in her voice changed. It wasn’t tired so much as curious. Like, she remembered the business we still had to get to.
“What snakes?” I asked, kind of surprised by the change in her disposition.
She spoke to me, but her eyes focused on the downstream horizon. “The rattlesnakes that bit Billy.”
“Stop it. Tell me what you’re talking about.”
“Katy showed me how to call serpents. I saw Billy’s bandages. I just wondered if he’d been bitten when you saw him?”
“When I found Billy he was almost dead, covered with bites.” She smiled. “It worked? Katy said it would.”
“Stop it. Alex—”
She put her hand over my mouth. I pulled away. “What?”
“I’m part of this as much as you. Janie was like a sister to me too, okay?” She stood up, her smile lingered on her lips for a second more. “I’m ready to go.”
We slipped back into the stream and continued. Waterfalls fell from the cliffs on the left. Tiny little trickles that would disappear in a month. The stream got a little wider, a little faster. I started to worry the current would get too strong to fight. I tried to stay as close to the bank as possible. The stream bent to the left, and we crossed to the other side. As we rounded the bend the stream disappeared altogether. I pulled Alex to shore. “Shit.”
I left her on the bank and scrambled ahead over the loose rocks to the edge of the waterfall.
“What?” she shouted.
Cliffs on both sides prevented us from circumventing the falls. “Dead end.”
Alex scrambled down the ledge and joined me. Just below the falls was a wide pool, then a rocky beach. And beyond that, the forest opened up again. “Let’s jump.”
“You can’t see the bottom. You don’t know what’s down there.”
She didn’t wait to reply. “I’d rather be dead at the bottom than dead by them.”
I nodded. “Take off your boots, and your jacket.” I steadied her as she did what I’d asked. “Put the envelope in a boot.”
I took off my shirt and shoved it into the boot with her envelope in it. Once I made sure her papers weren’t going to fly all over the place, I reached back and threw the boot to the rocks on the far side of the pool.
I stuffed Ben’s pistol and my hat into her other boot, and tossed it the same way. We scurried into the current along the edge of the falls and stood on the lip. Ankle-deep water wouldn’t sweep us away, but it could knock us over and we’d fall to the bottom. Whitewater clouded the view at their base. When it came time to jump I was the one who hesitated.
“It doesn’t matter—when you can fly.” She clasped my hand.
“I’m sorry. You know that, don’t you?”
Alex turned to me. “For what? No more apologies. No more moping. Keep your head and get me through this. We can do anything, right?”
She stepped to the edge of the falls, gently pulling me along.
Before jumping I stole a glance. She turned, her eyes met mine. Then she
smiled. For a moment, I really believed we could fly.
Whoosh!
The impact separated us. Her fingers slipped through mine and away. Water came into my nose. I fought the current to find her, but the falls pushed me down. The weight of the watershed and sky above was no match for two little tadpoles. It easily pushed me into the boulders at the bottom of the pool. I was little more than sediment to be carried off by the stream. Water rushed into my mouth and nose as the falls had their way with me, grinding me into the streambed. The current rolled my body, stray sharp rocks cut my back and shoulders.
I kicked harder to free myself. I tried to follow the bubbles to the top but they kept leading me down. The current tugged my arms, pulling me from my fetal curl. I could never quite find the sun. And the bubbles I was supposed to follow were all moving downstream, like a thousand fireflies released from a mason jar.
Somehow I knew to stop fighting, but my brain wouldn’t allow it. Cold filled my joints, made me slow. My lungs strained from lack of breath. In my mind I saw a blackness spreading from my chest as my need for air grew more desperate. I clawed at the rocks, a lame attempt to put the brakes on. The blackness climbed up my throat and I knew that I had to keep it out of my head if I wanted to live.
Small rocks rushed up through the current. They hit my elbows with bone- jarring thuds. I threw my arms over my head to protect my skull. Bigger rocks kicked me toward the surface, but the current’s downstream flow was always too strong to let me go. The cold, clear water kept me alert, and I tried to turn myself so that my feet were pointed downstream. The only way I’d be able to stay away from the rocks was by pushing off with my feet.
My lungs contracted, then spasmed. I’d been trying so hard to keep from inhaling that I never considered the alternative. Convulsive instinct forced the bad air from my lungs, and the sudden loss of buoyancy let my body fall to the bottom of the river.
Mountains and trees rippled in the sky above, but I couldn’t reach them no matter how hard I swam. My body, mostly water anyway, was insignificant against the torrent. The cold took the fight out of me. My mind told me it was okay to stop fighting.
This is just like a flip at Big Nasty.
I wrapped my weak arms around my knees and lowered my head. Slowly the opposing current released me to the main flow.
Now swim.
When I reached the surface, coughing brought me back to the reality of the situation. Again and again I choked on the water in my throat—the violent contractions drowned me with my own breath. Behind the falls on the rocks I thought I saw the white flash of Alex’s dress.
“Alex!”
But it was the sunlight reflecting off a wet slab of shale. I squinted and stared into the foam. A roiling pile of snow-white water confused me into thinking I saw her. “Alex!” I yelled one last time.
Near the base of the falls, just out of the main flow of water, I saw Alex’s dress and hair. She was face down. I struggled to keep her in sight as I swam into the mist. But upon reaching the spot where I’d last seen her, she was gone.
Fighting the current at the base of the falls, I searched frantically. Then, like a brook trout rising for a mosquito nymph, she surfaced next to me. “Alex.”
After a few breaths she sank back into the water. I dove after her, but she waved me off.
I returned to the surface for another breath and she appeared next to me. She caught her breath resting in a back-float, her hair spread on the surface like a cluster of fallen leaves.
I pulled her closer to me. “What are you doing?”
“Looking.” Her blue eyes reflected the sky above.
“For what?”
She slid her h
and over my cheek, then wiggled her ring finger.
She twisted it to check the fit, then said, “It wasn’t lost, Henry. Just misplaced. It’s all I have left.”
With a wet embrace she kissed me, her swimming muscles trembling at my touch. Below her flimsy dress I could feel the curve above her hip, the soft skin on the small of her back. When I pulled her toward me to kiss her again she laughed and rolled onto her side.
We kicked ourselves toward shore, and she said, “Rachael only told me two things before I left. One, whatever I did, make sure Odelia didn’t get the ring. And two, whatever I did, don’t lose it.”
Sunshine-draped rocks greeted us. Radiant heat tempted us to bask. Alex laid her head in the crook of my arm and shivered ever so slightly.
“We can’t, Alex. We have to go.”
“Just a few minutes, Henry. Ten minutes.”
I was too tired to respond. The cold water took it all from me. The air, the sun, the rocks, I could’ve just as easily been sleeping with Alex in our own bed. The early stages of dreaming drifted to me as my blinking eyes stayed closed longer and longer.
“No.” I jolted myself awake. “We have to move.”
I pulled Alex to her feet, noting how little more than a few tiny white buttons kept the dress over her shoulders. At that moment I loved her more than I ever thought I could, and wanted to show her.
From up in the gorge I heard a gunshot. I collected Alex’s boots and made sure the envelope stayed dry. I tucked the pistol back into my waistband. I reckoned they were trying to scare us out. That sound, the snap of gunpowder, was the only encouragement I needed.
We left the stream, and went deep into the forest on the side opposite the Lewises. Up. Away. Until the sound of the stream was no longer audible. Nearly to the top of the mountain.
At dusk we finally stopped walking and began searching for a shelter. A roof would’ve been nice, a fire heaven, but a thick bed of pine needles at the base of a cliff was our only luxury. Once Alex got settled I scrounged for walnuts that the fairydiddles overlooked, enough to nearly fill my shirt. I cracked them open, one at a time, for her. She chewed unapologetically, shivering. I would’ve gladly given her all of them if she had asked.
Hellbender (Murder Ballads and Whiskey Book 2) Page 21