Currency of Souls

by Kealan Patrick Burke

  “Flo, Gracie…someone help the lady,” I call out.

  “Don’t you touch her,” the man says. I wish I could see his face, but so far he’s only a voice and a pale sleeve with a Colt .45 at the end of it.

  I’m getting real tired of having guns pointed at me.

  Chapter Three

  “Move back,” the gunman says. “Now, or I redecorate this shithole with your brains.”

  “God knows that would be an improvement,” the Reverend chimes in, sounding not-at-all annoyed by this intrusion.

  The woman is shuddering, and there’s that goddamn instinctual need to help, to touch her, make sure she’s okay, but that bullet blower keeps me in place.

  “How come you don’t have a piece?” says the man.

  “I do, just not on me.”

  “Anyone else in there likely to act the hero?”

  I consider Kyle. He’s got a gun, and the guy’s probably going to find that out sooner or later. But “No,” I tell him, because later’s better.

  “You better not be lying to me.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Carla, you alive?”

  On the floor, head bowed, dark wet hair almost touching the boards, the girl slowly shakes her head. She’s bleeding something fierce.

  “She needs help.” It’s an obvious statement, but considering the guy is still standing in the doorway pointing a gun at me, I figure he could use the reminder.

  “Yeah, no shit. Don’t suppose there’s a doctor in there?”

  “No, but we can at least patch her up, stop the bleeding. Give her something for the pain. You’re not doing her any favors leaving her on the floor.”

  It doesn’t take him long to realize I’m right. He waggles the gun in my face. “Back up. All the way to the bar, and keep your hands where I can see them.”

  I set the whiskey bottle down on the floor and do as I’m told, walking backwards, hands in the air, until I’m just about level with the Reverend’s table. “You plan this?” I ask him, though somehow I know he didn’t, not unless he was suddenly stricken with guilt and decided to save me gas money.

  “It would seem,” he replies, “that we’ll have to suffer an unscheduled interlude.”

  “I find it hard to believe you don’t make allowances for this kind of thing.”

  “Oh, but I do. Before this night is through, that man and his little trollop will be still be so many pounds of mashed up meat branded by the tires of your truck, Tom. Doesn’t matter what they do to piss away the meantime.”

  “Shut your mouths,” the man with the gun says. He steps into the light and at last I’m able to see the face of my intended victim. He’s little more than a kid, it seems, not much older than Kyle, wearing a cream colored suit that was probably nice before the blood spoiled it, with a white shirt open at the collar. Shoulder-length blonde hair frames a face hardened by the many pit stops on the road to a Hell of his own design. He slams the door shut behind him and stands there, gun trained on me, then at everyone else in the room, before coming round to me again.

  “This isn’t the way to do it, son,” Cadaver says, and the thief almost jumps out of his suit and the skin beneath. I wince, waiting for him to pump a few rounds into the shadow in the corner, but he manages to restrain himself. “Who the fuck is that?”

  “Cadaver,” I tell him. “He’s just an old man. Leave him alone.”

  “The fuck’s he doing hiding?”

  “He’s not. That’s his table. Light just isn’t so good. It’s how he likes it.”

  “Yeah?” The kid doesn’t sound convinced, and his fingers dance on the butt of the gun like he’s deciding whether or not to illuminate Cadaver’s corner with some muzzle flash. “Move out here with the others.”

  Cadaver doesn’t make a sound, nor does he make a move.

  The kid clicks back the hammer. It makes the same sound Cadaver does when he swallows.

  “Look kid…” I take a step forward, and realize a split second after I’ve done it that it’s a mistake. The gun finds me again. Now I have two of them pointed at me. If Kyle and this guy fire at the same time, I may very well hit the ground with two shadows. I raise my hands palm out. “Just hang on a second, will ya? No one needs to get hurt here.” Which is a damned lie. Sooner or later, someone’s going to get hurt, and satin-pillow-in-a-pine-box kind of hurt. Right now though, the question is not who, but how many, and that’s not good enough.

  The kid catches sight of Cobb. Frowns. “Why’s he naked?”

  “Because I choose to be,” Cobb states boldly. “Ain’t got no use for clothes.”

  The kid smiles, and for a moment I see the real kid, the one hiding deep down inside that suit, the kid who watched his manners when his aunt came to visit, said grace before meals, and shook in his shoes when he showed up at the door for his first date. An All-American kid run over on the road of life, relieved of his dreams, then fixed right up with some choice drugs, a gun and a whore and sent on his way. Only to end up here, with his would-be executioner trying to talk some sense into him.

  “Some bunch of fuckin’ loons we got us here, Carla.”

  The woman on the floor doesn’t respond, but I almost don’t notice because now I know her name, and it dances before my eyes in lurid neon, mocking me. I wasn’t supposed to know. I don’t want to know, but now that I do, their ghosts will have names too.

  Wintry turns around in his seat, his huge head sheened with perspiration, and stands. The expression on his face is unreadable, but that big nose of his is flaring at the ends like a bull about to charge.

  “Hey now.” The kid is visibly intimidated. “Sit right back down big man, or I’m going to have to cut you down.”

  Wintry doesn’t move, but his eyes move to the fallen girl.

  “What are you doin’?” Flo asks, and grabs his sleeve. “Sit down.”

  But Wintry doesn’t. He glances at me and nods one time, as if it’s the cue to do something, as if he figures I’m clever enough to read those large brown eyes of his, or maybe he thinks he’s already shared his strategy via some telepathic link. Whatever it is, I don’t have time to figure it out because Wintry’s already moving, brushing past me, his jacket making a zipping sound as it grazes my outstretched fingers. It smells of pinesap and smoke.

  “Wait…”

  My objection is overruled by Flo’s panicked cry. “Wintry, don’t!”

  Wintry keeps walking.

  The kid stiffens. “Hey, I said sit down, man.”

  “Goddamn it,” Gracie pipes up. “Do as he says.”

  The kid aims the gun at the big man’s chest, licks his lips.

  Wintry keeps walking, but he’s not heading for the kid. He’s headed for the girl, and surely the kid sees this. Surely he’ll read the big black man’s intentions, understand what I didn’t, and—

  There’s a bang as if thunder has slipped under the door, a burst of light, and Wintry finally stops walking.

  Flo screams, her hands flying to her face like a mask made of fingers.

  The girl on the floor whimpers and looks up. Her face is a mass of ragged bloody scratches. The rain has smudged her mascara into raccoon-like circles around her glassy eyes. Her lipstick runs clear across her cheek. She looks at us all in turn as if she’s just realized we’re here.

  My ears are ringing.

  I wait for Wintry to look down, to assess the damage like folks do in the movies before they finally acknowledge a mortal wound and drop to the floor. Wintry’ll make a hell of a thud when he falls. My mind races, trying to think of something to do or say, but that shot might as well have passed through my brain.

  “Wintry…” Flo sobs.

  But when the smoke that coils like low fog between the big black man in the parka and the couple by the door finally dissipates, it’s the kid who staggers back and drops to a sitting position, his back against the door. On his face is shock, and confusion; on his shirt is a blossoming crimson flower.

  “My, my,” s
ays the Reverend.

  I hear Flo’s breath catch in her throat.

  Smoke continues to drift out from beneath Kyle’s table. The kid came here tonight to shoot someone, but the bullet that has my name in it now sits lodged in the belly of the man I was supposed to kill. I’ll wait to ponder the irony of that. There’s no time now.

  Silence weighs heavy in the room. At last I find my tongue. “Wintry, go on.” He does, stopping by the girl, though his eyes are on the wounded kid, and the gun that’s still in his hand.

  Cadaver, in an uncharacteristically animated move, emerges from the shadows looking grim, his black plastic raincoat swirling around him. His hip jars the table; another coin drops from its tower. Aside from Wintry and the girl, he’s nearest the kid, and knows it, and so hurries to his side, hunkers down and gives the kid a sympathetic glance before relieving him of his weapon. The kid doesn’t resist. Because the little microphone that Cadaver needs to press against the metal box in his throat to enable him to be heard is back on his table, he wheezes his words, and no one but him and the kid hear them. The kid stares at the old man as if he believes Death himself has come for him and replies, “Brody. James Brody.”

  And just like that, my nightmare is complete.

  “Fuck,” I mutter and squeeze my eyes with a thumb and forefinger.

  There comes a crashing sound and everyone jumps, startled, no doubt wondering what calamity has befallen us now, maybe the storm, God’s Hand, has come to smite us all one by one, like we damn well deserve. But it isn’t anything so dramatic. It’s Flo, who has swept her arm across the bar, sending a bunch of glasses and bottles crashing to the floor.

  “What the hell?” Cobb stands up, looking down at himself and the shattered remains of his Bud, but I know what she’s doing and silently commend her for it.

  “Bring her here,” she calls to Wintry, and he lifts the girl as if she weighs no more than an empty sack.

  Kyle’s still watching Brody, who’s gasping in the corner like he’s taken a slug in the lung. If he had, I figure he’d already be dead, but it’s hard to predict any man’s reaction to having his body insulted by a bullet.

  Cadaver, still with Brody, looks over his shoulder at me and mouths the words, “Needs fixin’.”

  I know he does, but the Reverend’s presence is like an extra shadow at my side, reminding me of the futility of our actions. Whether we patch those two unlucky kids up or not, they’re still going to die before the night ends. But Cobb is with Flo now, looking like the world’s unlikeliest orderly as they lay frayed towels out across the bar. Gracie is talking in soothing tones to the girl, who I can see now has a wide gash across her chest, another somewhere in the tangle of her hair that’s sending rivulets of blood down the back of her neck. Flo takes her hand as Wintry lays the girl down on the bar and heads back for her boyfriend. With the exception of Kyle, who I guess is in shock himself, the Reverend, and me, everyone is helping, even though we’re all privy to the same awful truth, truth we have no business knowing.

  Those kids are doomed.

  But right now, that doesn’t seem important. After all, they’re here when they shouldn’t be, and the keys to my truck, the keys to their fate, are still in my pocket.

  So I do the only thing left to do. I go to Kyle.

  I stop a few feet from his table, blocking his view of the wounded kid by the door. “You all right?” Another dumb question, but the only one I’ve got.

  “What do you care?”

  “You did the right thing, you know. If you hadn’t, it’d be Wintry bleeding to death on the floor. Any one of us might have done the same thing.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “We would have if we’d had the opportunity.”

  He looks up at me slowly and blinks, all of the hostility gone from his face, along with the color. “Is he dead?”

  “No, but he’s hurt bad.”

  “He going to die?”

  I consider my answer, then decide on the truth. “Hell, everybody does, but maybe not tonight.”

  “I’m going to Hell.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because I murdered him.”

  “Not yet you didn’t. And even if it’s too late and he expires on account of that bullet in his belly, all you did was hasten what was coming his way tonight anyway.”

  “We’re all going to Hell.”

  “Probably. Doesn’t mean we have to be in any hurry though.”

  “That bullet wasn’t meant for him.”

  “I know, but we can either stand here debating who should be dead and who shouldn’t, or we can help these kids out.”

  “Why?” He frowns and the sweat pools in the creases. I’m overcome with a sudden and alarming urge to hug the boy, just crush the fear out of him. But to do that I’d have to be calm myself, and I’m a long way from that right now. Besides, while I suspect he’s shot the last man he’s ever going to, I’ve been surprised before, and I’m in no rush to test the theory. Not yet, anyway.

  “Because they need it.”

  He laughs soundlessly, a wheeze that could have come from Cadaver’s mouth. “I could put this gun in my mouth right now.”

  “Sure you could.”

  “Would you stop me?”

  “I reckon I’d try.”

  “Why?” When he looks up at me, the emotion in his eyes is more powerful than any bullet, powerful enough to make me drop my gaze and immediately feel ashamed of it.

  I clear my throat, the words like glass tearing their way up my throat, slicing open my tongue. “Because no matter what you think of me, you’re still my son.”

  He scoffs. “My father’s dead.”

  “No I’m not, I’m standing right here. You’re looking at me, just as you’ve been looking at me every night since your mother died.”

  “Since you killed her.”

  “I didn’t kill her.”

  “Yes you did. You killed both of you.”

  “If that’s true then why do you come in here every Saturday night with a gun pointed at me? Can’t kill a dead man, y’know.”

  I’m fighting a losing battle to keep my composure. I want to hug the little son of a bitch, squeeze the hate out of him, reclaim him while I still have the chance, force him to understand.

  But I don’t understand it myself.

  “The bullet wasn’t meant for you either,” he tells me and finally brings the gun out from beneath the table. I recognize it of course, seeing as how it used to have a home in my holster. No police issue weaponry in Milestone, no sir. You just take whatever you think you’ll need to get the job done. Back when there was a job to do, that is.

  “It was for me,” he says, and I feel my heart shatter into a thousand pieces.

  Whatever I might have said, whatever magic words I might have summoned from the ether are blown away by the woman’s scream. Both of us turn toward the bar, and see Carla convulsing, chopping that scream into stuttered wails as Flo, wincing, presses a damp cloth to the girl’s chest.

  “Jesus.” I give the kid one final glance, hoping he sees the plea for another chance to talk this over, then I’m gone, storming across to the girl, my heart and soul in ruins as surely as if I was the one stretched out on the bar.

  I haven’t gotten far, when Brody, slung over Wintry’s shoulder, calls out, “Go easy on her. She’s pregnant.”

  And that takes what little wind is left in my sails right the fuck out of them.

  I turn on my heel and Reverend Hill slams his glass down on the table and stands. “Enough.”

  I want to kill him. Rage boils within me, fueled further by regret over Kyle and his intentions, rage at my blindness, at my cowardice, for never questioning the speed with which my world grew dark, or the pain I dealt the people fumbling around within it. “You son of a bitch. You never mentioned a child.”

  “What difference does it make? People who cause fatal accidents very rarely get the luxury of counting their victims beforehand. Ha
d everything proceeded here as it was damn well supposed to, you’d never have known any different, and that murderer’s conscience of yours would have been spared an extra little slice of reality.” He steps close, until our noses are almost touching. “Never forget, Sheriff, that I am the only thing standing between you and eternal damnation. I’m the closest thing you have to God, and as such I own you, so it would behoove you to stop questioning it and accept it as truth.”

  “This is eternal damnation,” I counter, “And it seems to me that God would know what the fuck was going on, which you clearly don’t.”

  Brody moans with pain as Wintry sets him down in his own chair next to Flo. Even in times of stress he knows better than to seat anyone in Cobb’s place.

  The Reverend looks over my shoulder at the kid, then smiles. “Then let’s find out why things haven’t gone according to plan, shall we?”

  Cadaver regains his seat amid the shadows.

  Gracie spills bourbon over the girl’s exposed chest—the wound is deep—eliciting another agonized shriek from her, and I know I’m right. This is eternal damnation, or at the very least, some kind of waiting room where all we get to do is sit and stew and wait for our number to be called. I decide in that moment, without even the faintest idea how it’s going to go down, that more than these kid’s numbers are going to be called tonight.

  The Reverend stands before the kid, who has a blood-soaked hand clamped over his belly. “Well now,” he says, “Looks like you’re in a bit of a pickle here.”

  “We need a doctor,” Brody says, his pallid face slick with sweat. “Please.”

  The Reverend cocks his head. “And why should we do something like that for a man who introduced himself by shoving a gun in a lawman’s face, then threatened to shoot the only fella in here who seemed inclined to help him?”

  “Gracie, call Doctor Hendricks,” I tell her, but the Reverend raises a hand he’d like you to believe was made to heal sinners.