The Big Finish

by James W. Hall

  He waggled his hand and led Thorn down a slope of open ground, the bushes flattened or hacked away to make room for the van. The bank slanted gently down to the sluggish flow of the river, and running alongside it the hard-packed shore was barely wide enough for a single vehicle to navigate.

  “Up river about a mile there’s a beach near the highway where people fish and swim and hold baptisms.” Ladarius motioned north. “That’s where your people came in and drove down here till they found that clearing. Nice spot for camping. Nice hideout. They came and went on foot through the edge of Belmont Heights, talking to those who’d stand still and listen, mostly preaching to the folks around here about shit they already know, how bad the hog farm is for everybody, like we got to hear about that, like we haven’t been living that goddamn nightmare every day of our lives, then when they were wore out talking to my people they worked their way down to the Mexican trailers.”

  Ladarius headed back up the bank to the woods and Thorn followed. The last of the drug’s effects had faded, the tension was leaving his shoulders, a new clarity returning to his vision.

  “Flynn blew his whistle then ran. Where was he shot? Do you know?”

  “Don’t know exactly, don’t truly matter, does it?”

  “You’re right.”

  “Now I’ll show you something else.”

  As Ladarius was leading him along a rocky crest that followed the river’s path, Thorn asked him how he knew all this.

  “I’m showing you this one last thing, then I’m done with you,” Ladarius said without turning around. “After this you’re on your own time.”

  “Dobbins did this,” Thorn said. “All this killing to cover up his drug operation.”

  Ladarius pushed through the brambles and branches, taking long strides.

  “Why hasn’t the town done something? He’s a criminal, a murderer. He holds his employees captive, tortures them. He’s polluting your water and your air, he’s slaughtering people in the woods, he’s dealing drugs to the citizens. Why haven’t you called the state police, the FBI? Dobbins might be powerful in these few square miles, but he’s not some god.”

  Ladarius stopped but didn’t turn around. He tilted his head back as if beseeching the heavens for patience.

  “Where you from, mister?”

  Key Largo, Thorn told him.

  “That a small place, is it? Small as Pine Haven?”

  “Similar, I suppose.”

  Ladarius turned to face him with a sour look.

  “How many different jobs can a man work at in this place you live?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Bartenders, plumbers, people like that. How many different kinds?”

  “A lot.”

  “In this place you from, this Key Largo, there one man who holds all the strings to all those jobs?”

  “That doesn’t matter,” Thorn said. “He’s an evil man. He’s fucking up your world. He’s a dictator. Dictators can be overthrown.”

  “So there’s not one man holding all the strings? That what you telling me? You never had experience of this kind? That’s what you’re saying?”

  Thorn was silent.

  “First day you arrive, you drove a car into Pine Haven, ain’t that right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You see any thriving metropolis on your way? Any gated golf course communities, any streets paved in silver or gold? Anything like that? ’Cause I don’t think so. I don’t think you saw nothing but neediness and empty fields and empty highways and crumbling-down buildings.

  “’Cause see, if Webb Dobbins was to be struck down by lightning or carried off to jail as we all agree would be the rightful outcome of his criminal actions, then it wouldn’t be a year before Pine Haven looked exactly like all that mess you drove through. Just as empty, just as needy and downhearted.”

  “Somebody else would take over, run that farm.”

  “Is that right? You know that for a fact, do you?”

  “Why wouldn’t they?”

  “What you think Webb Dobbins is in the drug business for? To be a millionaire? No, sir. He’s selling his poison over at the military bases so he can pay his debts to Pastureland Corporation. That drug money just gets them by. Take it away, that farm dies in a month. And those are the same debts anybody else would have if they bought that farm. It ain’t going to happen.

  “Then you got all the harm those hogs already done to the land and river and the air. Easier to set up shop somewhere else where nothing ain’t polluted yet, where the people don’t know what’s coming their way, and they’re all singing and happy and clapping their hands about this new business bringing jobs to town. That’s what happens. Dobbins dies or goes to jail, this whole town withers up and blows away like a milkweed bloom in August.”

  Ladarius stepped close to Thorn and pointed a finger at his face, then thumped that finger hard against Thorn’s chest.

  “So you think twice before you go screaming for the FBI or the state police. Most people in this town’d like nothing better than to slice Dobbins’s throat, but they know damn well if they did, they’d be good as slicing their own and their brothers’ and their sisters’ and all their little children’s throats too.

  “Now follow me, Mr. Key Largo, and don’t be talking no shit about things you don’t have no damn idea about.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  LADARIUS LED HIM ACROSS A gully to the riverbank, then marched down the smooth shoreline until they reached a spot where the mud was freshly chewed by tire tracks.

  “Look there in the water, out about ten feet.”

  Thorn leaned over the river, cupped his hands against the sunlight.

  The ATV Cassandra had been driving was submerged, six, seven feet down in the muddy current.

  “What she did was, the redhead, she came roaring into Belmont, five, ten minutes before you showed up. We gave her directions, same directions I’m about to give you, and after she went off, we drove that machine over here and rolled the goddamn thing into the river to cover her tracks.”

  “I’m not following you.”

  “We was keeping your boy,” Ladarius said. “Ministering to him best we know how. That man Eddie you met, the one you been driving his car, he was an army medic in one of those foreign places, Iraq or Iran, Kuwait, wherever the hell that war was. Eddie’s as close to a doctor as we got, so it was him keeping your boy alive, giving him pills and cleaning his wounds, lord almighty, he plucked enough buckshot out of his backside to sink a rowboat.”

  “Flynn’s alive? Where is he?”

  Ladarius looked over at the sunken ATV. This man was going at his own pace no matter what whirling foolishness the world threw in his path.

  “Like I’m saying, Eddie, a week, ten days, he’s spending every hour with that boy, keeping his breath moving in and out, keeping his heart pumping, talking to him, putting cold rags on his forehead, neglecting everybody else in his own backyard, their fevers, their coughing, their headaches, my little girl’s got asthma so bad she almost died two nights ago because Eddie was doctoring the shit out of your boy.

  “And every time Burkhart come around with his bloodhounds and his shotgun, kicking down doors and searching for that kid, Eddie would slide him quick onto a stretcher and a couple of the young ones would get out of bed and carry him back into these woods till Burkhart was done with his terrorizing.

  “Burkhart, he had one of your boy’s shirts or underpants, I don’t know what it was, but he was carrying it around in a plastic bag, must’ve taken it from that van, and he’s holding it under the dogs’ noses and putting them on the scent. Couple of nights ago those tracking dogs came right up to Eddie’s door. Too damn close, he barely got your boy out of there before Burkhart came busting in.

  “So that’s what’s been going on around here. That’s what we been doing, all of us in one way or the other, to keep your kid alive. Don’t ask me why, ’cause there ain’t no good reason for it. Boy was a fool on a fool�
��s errand. Preaching to the choir is all he was doing. Then him or the redhead, one of those folks, they flashed money in front of the Mexicans, got a couple of them to sneak around, do some spying inside the hog farm, taking pictures or whatever the hell they did, and that got one of those Mexicans killed. Kid just trying to make a wage. Your boy and his friends coming in here, not knowing shit from apple butter, a week on after they show up people are dying because of them and me and my people, every day it gets more certain one of us is going to be shot dead by Burkhart or Webb for hiding your boy’s sorry ass.

  “You asking me is he alive, well, I’d tell you if I could, but I can’t. All I know is, he was halfway alive when me and the others, we couldn’t take it anymore, all the dogs sniffing around for him, and the danger we were putting our own people in for hiding that kid, so we brought him down here, down to the river, and we put him in a boat and we set him loose.”

  “Set him loose,” Thorn said.

  “Set him loose, exactly right.”

  It was a dark green aluminum canoe, one of two, Ladarius informed him, that Flynn’s group brought along to use in the escape plan they never had the chance to employ. Ladarius showed Thorn where the remaining canoe was hidden inside a blackberry thicket and buried beneath a pile of leaves. Ladarius dragged it out and kept dragging it, Thorn following him down the bank to the riverside.

  “Was Flynn strong enough to paddle?”

  “Hell no, he wasn’t strong enough. It was a miracle the boy could sit upright at all.”

  “So in that condition you just pushed him into the river by himself?”

  “If I’d’ve done that, I wouldn’t be much better than Webb Dobbins or Burkhart, now would I?”

  “Someone went with him?”

  Ladarius drew an exasperated breath and whistled it out.

  “What you do, you go down this river, just paddle with the current, shouldn’t tax you too much, in half an hour, forty-five minutes, you’ll come to a dogleg bend to the right, and just past that you’ll see a rickety little dock, all but gone, just a couple of pilings that ain’t finished rotting yet, hanging on like bad teeth, and that’s where you pull out. You walk up the bank a way and you don’t need to do another thing, no need to shout hello, ’cause they’ll find you, you count on that, yes, sir. They’ll know the minute you step on their land.”

  “You’re not going to tell me what you’re sending me into?”

  “It ain’t nothing worse than where you been already.”

  Thorn loaded the duffel in the bow, took a seat in the stern, and Ladarius nudged him out into the sluggish current.

  “You be careful now, whatever you do next, you hear? Don’t be overthrowing any dictators unless it’s the only way to save your sorry ass.”

  The river was deceptive, the current taking Thorn’s canoe more briskly than it appeared capable of. He was off and away from Ladarius before he had time to say good-bye, and when he swiveled around, the man had slipped back into the woods and was gone.

  Borne into the center of the waterway by invisible tributaries within the river’s flow, Thorn dug his paddle in deep and tried to gain control, but the current had commandeered the canoe and turned it broadside and was dragging him toward twin rocks spread apart no farther than the mouth of a hockey net. Before he could right himself, his stern collided hard against the outer edge of one rock, which sent the canoe into a spiral that splashed a small wave over his starboard side. He wallowed badly and it felt for a moment like he was about to swamp the boat and go for an extended swim.

  It was then Thorn understood the drug had not finished with him and was at the very least slowing his reflexes if not sabotaging his entire nervous system. He back-paddled hard for several strokes, got the bow headed downstream, and finally settled into a more balanced position on the seat. At least the cold river water had toned down his delirium a bit, waking him from the drowse he’d gotten lost in.

  He concentrated on piloting, holding steady mid-river, paddling with small, tentative strokes like a drunk trying to tiptoe a straight line with police lights whirling nearby. It was a lesson in control, how much Thorn truly exercised, how much was beyond him. The river had its own ideas and a capricious streak. After a while he steadied himself, steering when he could, obeying the tug of the current when he couldn’t, keeping as close to the right bank as he was able.

  No one lived along this stretch of water, though he saw what looked like abandoned fishing shacks through the trees, summer cabins perhaps, where city people had once come before the river grew so contaminated it lost its appeal. There were half-sunk floating docks and diving boards fixed to the edges of back-porch decks, automobile tires washed ashore, all but hidden beneath years of river mud.

  A clear-cut acre appeared to his right. Stripped of timber, the land had grown scar tissue of weeds and saplings, and as he passed by the current seemed to grow faint as if the river were honoring the loss of foliage. Sunning itself in that open space, a great blue heron was flushed by Thorn’s passing and with a startled cry it rose awkwardly then swooped forward in front of his canoe and raced along before him skimming the water with the tips of its wings, leaving its brief autograph.

  He missed the channels of deeper water and ran through a series of small foaming rapids, the canoe scraping hard across the rocky bottom, bumping against hidden rocks, then washing over a four-foot dip, a mini-waterfall, and floundering for a moment, barely averting another pinwheel slide.

  Around him the river made a low humming sound as soothing as the gentle wash of surf. In the nearby forest crickets were perfecting their tedious drone. Here and there clusters of dead fish floated in patches like shiny silver oil slicks and above him a few dragonflies who’d lingered into winter were lacing knots in the still air. He could smell the rich moldy shoreline, generations of leafy decay, the rank metallic aroma of damp clay rarely touched by the sun.

  In its way the terrain was as wild and gorgeous and as jeopardized as the Florida landscape he felt so passionate about. This place needed defending too, needed people like Flynn and Cassandra who were willing to put all else aside and risk themselves to rescue what was left of it. Hog farms that fed an insatiable national hunger were clearly not the only dangers. There was a listless, undervalued quality to the land itself and to its people. They seemed more like captives than citizens. No one with the stomach for a brawl. So much already lost, there was little left to fight for.

  When he came upon the dogleg bend then saw the collapsing dock, its appearance was so sudden, he had to back-paddle hard, putting on the brakes, and swing the canoe at nearly a right angle to the current, and even with a flurry of deep and urgent strokes, he missed the remains of the dock by several feet and plowed the canoe into a soft, sloppy embankment.

  Thorn climbed over the duffel and hopped across to the slope, pulled the canoe forward till it was half out of water. He left the duffel behind and scrambled up the bank, punching footholes along the way as if he were scaling a snowy cliff.

  At the summit of the bank there were knee-high weeds and a rickety chain-link fence that had lost its battle with rust and gravity and toppled over and was lying nearly flat before him. NO TRESPASSING signs were nailed to several trees, though they looked as ancient and unattended as the fence.

  He stopped for a moment and peered into the shadowy woods, and when his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he made out the vague outline of a cabin but no sign of activity. Perhaps he’d landed too soon, and this wasn’t the property Ladarius had directed him to. Then again, he’d not seen any docks farther up the river and this was the first enclave he’d seen in the last half hour with even a remote chance of being occupied.

  Following the remnants of a path, he waded through the weeds, heading toward the house. He was twenty yards off when just a few feet to his right the gleam of metal surprised him.

  A girl of seven or eight with blond curls that hung to her shoulders sat in an adult-size wheelchair. She was dressed in a cowgirl shi
rt with red and black checks and blue jeans with fancy stitching. The legs of the jeans hung loose and flapped in a river breeze. A brown paper sack with a grease stain sat in her lap.

  Beside her stood an enormous yellow dog, mostly Lab but partly Saint Bernard or some other long-haired giant breed. It had been focused on the girl and the bag in her lap, but as Thorn approached it swung its massive head around, its neck hairs bristling, and began to make a low rumbling growl.

  “You Thorn?”

  “I am.”

  “I’m Emma,” she said. “They’re in the house. Mom and the others. You like chocolate chip cookies?”

  Thorn took a slow breath. He hadn’t realized how rattled his nerves were, how trip-wired he’d become from the drugs and the violence but mostly from hearing how badly injured Flynn was.

  “Sure, I love chocolate chip cookies.”

  She rolled forward, then tucked a hand into the bag and came out with a cookie, extending it to him. The dog followed her, still growling, and watching Thorn with an unsettling focus on his throat.

  “Every Sunday Mama bakes them, a special treat if I’ve been good all week. Usually I’m good. Sometimes I’m not, though, sometimes I get a little peevish. Do you get peevish?”

  “I do. More often than I’d like.”

  “It’s hard to be good all the time,” she said. “Don’t you think it’s hard?”

  “The hardest thing there is.” He sampled the cookie. Chewy and fresh, warm from her lap, the sun, or just out of the oven. “Your mama is Millie?”

  “Everybody knows Mama. She’s famous in Pine Haven, best waitress in the county.”

  “She’s excellent.”

  “The boy inside, the one that’s hurt, you’re his dad?”

  “I am. Can I see him now?”

  “That’s why I’m parked here. To show you where he is. This is Duke. It’s short for Marmaduke, but we just call him Duke. He’s friendly, you can pet him if you want, but don’t touch his head, he doesn’t like that, or his ears.”

  He passed on petting Duke but asked Emma if he could help roll her chair up to the house, and she shook her head.