Currency of Souls

by Kealan Patrick Burke

  “Then what did you see?” he says.

  And Wintry remembers.

  Smoggy daylight.

  The man is dead, neck crushed, skull broken, three silver teeth scattered around his head, one stuck to his lower lip. Wintry is straddling him, fists joined together and raised over his head, an anvil ready to deliver another fatal blow. The children, cowering next to dumpsters, holding each other, covering their eyes at the sight of one monster killing another, stop him. He looks at them, an unspoken apology on his lips, pleading in his eyes. Glances from one terrified face to another until his skin goes cold and the blood drains from his own. There is a man there, nodding sagely as if what he has just seen is confirmation of what he has always suspected. The stranger is not as sharply dressed as the man with the fedora, the man Wintry has just beaten to a bloody pulp. His smile is not silver, but it’s just as blinding. He wears driving gloves, the leathery fingers on his right hand curled around the emaciated shoulder of one of the children, a small boy with tears carving clear lines in a grubby face. But while the boy may be deriving some solace from the stranger’s hand, there is no compassion in the man’s eyes. Only glee. And the knowledge that his efforts to contaminate these children will now go unhindered. The police won’t care enough to feign concern. The children are poor and black, after all. And the one man who assigned himself their guardian is going to be put away for the murder of a pimp.

  Wintry starts to stand and when he does it is the night that greets him.

  “The wrong man,” his father says. “But you been foolin’ yourself, tryin’ to make believe you been feelin’ bad about killin’ a man when all that’s been botherin’ you is not killin’ the right one.”

  “What did you ever know about me?” Wintry asks, a new burning starting deep down inside him, a welcome flame that sears away some of the fear, numbs some of the pain. “What did you ever know about anythin’? Think now that…” His breath catches as new agony flares in his knees. He straightens, blinks once, twice. “Think now that you dead…think now that you know it all you can come along’n throw it in my face?”

  His father is still bouncing on his feet, knuckles making creaking sounds, as if they’re encased in leather gloves. Wintry sways, staggers and rights himself, draws up to his full height, and in two unsteady steps is in his father’s face. “You know nothin’ about me,” Wintry says, and brings his right fist around in an arc, which his father watches with interest, approval, then avoids with a quick back-step. He follows the dodge with an uppercut that makes Wintry think his brain has been sent shooting from the top of his head.

  Blood flies. He watches as it spurts upward and…

  …“I can’t make it stop,” he moans and reaches down, his trembling fingers slick with the woman’s blood. “Jesus please…”

  White light in a bedroom.

  The olive-skinned woman stares at him, but the life has fled her eyes. The accusation however, hasn’t. She stares, peers deep into his soul and Wintry can hear her crying Why didn’t you see? Why didn’t you know? She is naked, lying in bed, her head propped up against the headboard, her wrists opened. She moves, jiggles, mimics life, but this is merely the effect of Wintry’s desperate attention. He moans, wails, rages at the ceiling, at whatever cruel God is impassively watching this drama unfold. She is the love of his life and he knows now the reverse was never true. Had it been, she would still be alive. Had it been, she would not have betrayed him and herself, by waiting until she was alone to die.

  Then, abruptly, her mouth drops open. His moaning subsides. Frantically, he scrubs tears from his eyes, narrows them, afraid to believe he has just seen what they are telling him he’s seen.

  And though no life returns to her face, she speaks, though here is where Wintry knows memory has slipped the rails. It hardly matters though, because what she says are the same words that have tailed him through life.

  “You killed me.”

  With a roar that is animalistic yet filled with sorrow and rage, Wintry once more regains his feet and without knowing, without caring, whether his aim is sure, he swivels on his heel and jabs hard at the air. His father is prepared and smiling a suddenly silver smile. He dodges the punch, as Wintry knew he would. It is a feint, a ploy to induce the dead man to open up into a vulnerable position. His father has grown too certain, too comfortable, depending on his son’s injuries and hesitation to make him predictable. In the old days he would have anticipated the feint. But these are not the old days.

  An instant too late, he realizes his folly, tries to correct it. And in that instant Wintry unleashes a volley of punches: left jab, straight right, left hook, uppercut. His father reels, but refuses to go down, so Wintry does not stop. The anger in him rages to the surface, equals the fire in his wounds. Straight left, jab, jab, rabbit punch, right hook, uppercut…

  “You fuckin’…” his father starts to say, his teeth connected by strings of black blood. Wintry steps back, watches his father try to regain his balance, and does not wait.

  “Sonofabitchin’ los—”

  Uppercut.

  It almost takes his father’s head off.

  “What…do…you…see?” Wintry says, his teeth grinding out a squeak as he punctuates every word with another punch, his arm pulling back, head jutting forward, knuckles crunching into yielding bone, skin slipping against tar-like blood. “What…do…you…see…you…son…of…a…bitch?”

  “Wintry?”

  The voice does not belong here, so he ignores it. There is no third man in the ring, no chief second howling advice at him, no cut man. There are no lights, no crowd, no world beyond the face that is caving in like a pumpkin but will not fall.

  “Wintry, what the hell?”

  “Fuckin’ palooka, fuckin’ tomato can,” his father manages to spit between punches. He raises his hands, covers, tries to block the barrage of lethal blows, but Wintry is fast now, on fire, caught up in a memory he can never change and so uses to deliver him from the loathsome presence of a man long dead, a man who didn’t need to physically return to haunt him. In the dark house inside Wintry’s head, the man he called father is a permanent resident.

  “Go down,” he demands, the words slicing his throat. “Go down.”

  “Wintry!” A shout, right into his ear and he knows it must be addressed, knows it must be dealt with. He prepares his last blow, the last shot, a right hook he imagines as a scythe that will slice through anything it touches. His father straightens, grins bloodily, goading him.

  Wintry swings.

  His fist thuds into rotten oak.

  Chapter Twelve

  “There’s nothing I can do for you,” the doctor tells him. “Take it to the Sheriff.”

  Vess sags and his suit starts to feel like a tortoise shell, waiting to conceal his addled mind from a world that rarely seems inclined to cut it a break. “I thought…She told me to—”

  Hendricks scowls. “This isn’t my business.” He starts to close the door and Vess, in an uncharacteristically bold move, makes an obstruction of his foot, which the doctor looks at as if some unpleasant rodent has just insinuated its way into his domain. Fear ripples through Vess. This is not how he behaves. He has forgotten much, but knows that what he has just done is a violation of the doctor’s sanctuary, his private quarters, and that if it suited him, the doctor could take any steps he deemed necessary to remove the foot, and its owner, and be well within his rights to do so.

  So he speaks quickly. “She was shut up in a fridge, a white coffin. She wasn’t supposed to be in there. She told me. Said I needed to find someone, let them know where she was and why she was there.” He composes a sincere sorrowful look that nonetheless feels false under the glaring light from the doctor’s spectacles. “She’s a lady, Doctor, and no lady needs to be treated like that, left alone with no one to pray for her. And she doesn’t want to be there any more. Can’t blame her for that. She needs help.”

  Hendricks looks up from the offending appendage keepin
g the door open. “What is it you think I can do for her?”

  To this, Vess has no answer. All he can think of is that surely a man as distinguished and gifted as Doctor Hendricks can do more for her than he can, but before he has a chance to organize those words into a proper sentence, he feels a jarring pain in his foot and quickly withdraws it. When he looks up, the Doctor’s face is crimson.

  “I have things to attend to,” he snaps. “Now take your goddamn finger and bring it to someone who can actually do something about it, assuming you didn’t swipe it from a boneyard somewhere.”

  “No, sir. Oh no this wasn’t—”

  The door is slammed shut hard enough to make his coat flutter. The gunshot-like echo is quickly drowned in the dense river of mist that has seeped up from the quiet earth. Vess stares at the door for a few moments, runs the tips of his fingers over the woodgrain, willing the doctor to come out again, then after a few moments, sighs and turns away.

  “He wouldn’t listen.”

  He has never claimed to be clever, or wise, and certainly not someone to turn to when a plan of action is required. He has drifted through these recent years with no responsibilities save one: to find the box and get home, but though he has vowed never to give up, his hope fades with every passing day.

  “Find him,” the finger advises, and he smiles down at where it lays unmoving, nestled in his palm.

  “Are you cold?”

  “Find him. He must know.”

  “It will probably be warm later today, but it isn’t now. I don’t want you to be chilly. Here,” he says and gently lays the small brown bundle inside his hat and pops it on his head. The bones are cold against his scalp. “I was distracted. I let my mind get away from me again. I should have thought of you being cold. I’m sorry.”

  The finger doesn’t reply.

  Vess puts a long-nailed finger to his chin and scratches at the stubble.

  The Sheriff is a member of an exclusive club that gathers at the tavern on the hill. But of course the tavern burned down last night. Still, this early in the morning, perhaps that’s where the Sheriff will be, maybe picking through the remains of the place or making sure the fire is well and truly out. Barring that, he might be home, or at the jail, but one of the three sounds probable. If nothing else, it will keep Vess moving, keep him filled with that sense of purpose, keep him feeling useful.

  For now, he is Kirk Vess, emissary.

  Kirk Vess, soldier. And while there are no mortars detonating around him, no razor wire tugging at his clothes, no mud sucking at his feet, no bullets whizzing by, carving out the grooves in his face that he still bears today, no mustard gas tugging at his lungs, his charge seems no less important, no less thrilling.

  He walks, and the small cold bundle pressing against his crown is a lock on the gate of his misgivings, holding back the tide of disappointment that has struggled to overcome him since the discovery that the metal box mired in the mud by the bank of the Milestone River was in fact just a fridge—albeit one with a body inside—and not the box he has been searching for since finding himself out of place, and out of time in this town.

  Just a fridge, and not the box that can spirit him home.

  * * *

  “Hey, easy,” I tell him.

  Wintry rounds on me. His face is a picture of hellish madness, his breathing horribly irregular as if his lungs have been replaced with sacks of dust. His eyes are wide and black, dominated by his pupils. They fix on me and the hair stands up all over my body. I suddenly feel threatened by the last man I ever thought would make me feel that way. He withdraws his fist from the guts of the oak tree and takes a step toward me. I take a corresponding step back.

  “Where he at?” Wintry asks.

  I’m shocked to hear him speak, but don’t dwell on it. No one ever said he couldn’t talk, just that he’d lost his words. Guess I should have given those cryptic messages of his a little more thought. “Who?”

  His teeth are bared; his lips, swollen from the burns, are split. Blood laces his gums. “The old man. He made me a bargain. Where he at?”

  It’s almost too much. Wintry’s not dead. Burned to within an inch of it, sure, but still up and around, and not only is he alive, he’s talking. For now I’m choosing not to think too hard about what kind of bargain he made with Cadaver, assuming that’s what happened and the big guy hasn’t just been driven crazier than a one-legged possum by his injuries. Right now the sight of those dilated eyes and the tattered state of his fists from ramming them into the oak tree, suggests it’s not at all unlikely that he’s gone off the deep end, in which case, maybe I have every right to feel threatened. Plus, there’s the small fire he set here, which for a man covered in burns, doesn’t seem like the sanest of ideas.

  “I don’t know,” I answer. “I haven’t seen him since Eddie’s went up. We need to get you to a doctor.”

  Wintry takes another step toward me. His arms are trembling, fists clenched so hard that blood trickles from the cuts and drips to the grass. “I put him down.”

  “Wintry, take it easy, all right. It’s me, Sheriff Tom.”

  That gives him pause. He stops moving but the expression of wild rage on that ruined face doesn’t change.

  “It’s Tom,” I tell him, hands raised, as if they have a chance of warding off anything he might throw at me. “It’s me.”

  The expression falters, and although I can’t be certain, it looks as if those eclipses in his eyes are passing. The rigidity that has held him upright, has kept his muscles taut, gradually subsides and then all trace of anger evaporates, replaced with suffering of the kind you’d expect to see on a man so badly wounded. He sags, leans, his shoulder hitting the tree hard enough to make it creak and sway back a little. Something in the branches above us lets out a startled cry. Wings beat smoky air.

  “Sheriff?” he says, and blinks.

  “You all right, Wintry?” I know he isn’t, but it’s all I can think to say.

  “Hurts bad.”

  “We need to get you to Hendricks.”

  “No,” he says, with a sad shake of his head. “You need to put me in the ground.”

  “Don’t be a fool. You’re still breathing.”

  “I don’t want to be. Shouldn’t be.”

  “Bullshit. We’re getting you to the Doc.”

  This time it’s him who raises the hand.

  “Okay. We can wait a sec.” Truth is, I don’t have the kind of time I’m about to spend with him, but though I may have forgotten a lot about the way people should be treated, there’s no way in hell I’m leaving this man to his suffering, not when there’s a chance something can be done about it.

  I walk up close and put a palm on the tree. It feels cold, oily. “Thought for sure you went up with the tavern.”

  “Got out. Ran and got myself into the river,” he tells me. “Maybe should’ve stayed under.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  His eyes find me. “Couldn’t save ’em.”

  “I know, but that wasn’t your fault, and you did everything you could. Wasn’t you who started the fire. And you saved Brody.”

  He starts to lower his head, at the same time bringing up his ravaged hands to cradle his skull, but they stop short of meeting, as Wintry no doubt remembers the pain it will cause him to do so. “Couldn’t save ’em, Sheriff. I always been tryin’ to save folks and it never works out right. Reckon…one mistake too many got me here, no matter how good the intention. Path to Hell, an’ all that.”

  “Well…” A sigh. “I can’t put your mind at ease about that, Wintry, much as I’d like to. Fact is, we’re here, no matter what the reason, but I got a feeling in my gut that we still have a chance to make it out of this. Could be I’m wrong about that too, and we’re just killing time before a great big hand comes down and squashes us all. But I’m not going to just sit around and wait for that to happen, and you can’t either.”

  “I was a fighter,” he says.

  “You still are
.”

  “Naw, Tom. I’m done. Put my Daddy down and that’s all there is to that.”

  I start to ask him what that means, but think better of it.

  Pained eyes find me again. “Your boy all right?”

  “I’m not sure. He isn’t dead, if that’s what you mean. It’s where I was heading now when we saw you.”

  “We?”

  “Brody’s in the truck. Been meaning to stick him in the tank, but it hasn’t exactly been calm tonight, y’know?”

  “Where you goin’?”

  “Hill’s house. Or at least I was. Gotta get you to Hendricks, or the hospital in Saddleback now.”

  “Forget it.”

  “I’m not leaving you here.”

  “Then take me to the Rev’rends. Maybe I can help.”

  I don’t see how he could be of help to anyone right now, but I meant what I said: I’m not leaving him. So I guess if he won’t go to the hospital, or see Doc Hendricks, then he’s coming with.

  “All right, but when we’re done up there, you’re going to see the Doc if I have to haul you in there myself.”

  The idea of me trying to physically force the wounded giant before me to do anything is a comical one, and neither of us can let it pass without grinning at it.

  “Okay, Sheriff.”

  I go to him, put my arm around his waist and let him lean on me. It’s almost more than I can handle, and the smell of singed hair and burned flesh is enough to make me choke, but I manage to keep him steady as I guide him back to my truck.

  From the back seat, where not so long ago his girlfriend lay dying, Brody’s head is titled back, mouth open. Son of a bitch is catching himself a doze. I can hear him snoring from here.

  We reach the truck. Wintry reaches out with an unsteady hand, braces it against the hood as I let him go and quickly open the passenger side door. “C’mon, get yourself in here.” It isn’t easy. He’s almost too damn big to fit, but that isn’t the worst of it. I can see how much he’s suffering with even the slightest of movements.

  As for me, I’m fit for nothing but sleep. I’m running on empty and the idea of bypassing Hill’s house and just driving straight on to Saddleback and the hospital there is almost too tempting to resist. After all, what the fuck am I doing here anyway? Three murderers in a car. Sounds like the start of a joke. Heading for a dead priest’s house to try to convince my own son—who hates my guts—not to betray me? What difference will it make if he does? We’re both finished either way.