The Listener

by Robert McCammon

  His face was a heavy burden of pain. He could feel his eyes swelling up. His throat also seemed to be swollen tight because he could swallow only with an effort, and that effort was the most searing agony he’d ever felt in his life. He passed out and came back again, in time to hear Monty give a yell to the misty night that sounded like the battlecry of a vicious tribe that fought a war upon every Negro skin just for the pleasure of the fighting.

  And the killing too, Curtis thought in his nightmare haze. He knew these men might kill him this early morning, might beat him to death and leave him hanging by the neck from a tree limb. And then…what would become of Mr. Ludenmere, and of Nilla and Little Jack? He tried to lift his head but it weighed at least two hundred pounds. Could he speak to Monty? At least say the word Please as somebody might try to calm a wild animal? When he tried that, the pain that ripped through his throat was almost unbearable, and his voice was not even loud enough to be a ragged moan, but was the whisper of one.

  He realized, tasting the blood in his mouth, that whatever bad injury had been done to his throat by that crushing knee…he had lost the power of speech.

  In his twilight Curtis heard Whipper and Fido laugh like they were going to a fine party. Then the wind of their speed tore the laughter to shreds, and the truck growled on.

  ****

  “They’re still comin’.”

  Nilla paused in her forward motion to look back over her shoulder. Her brother was right. She could see the two lights, searching for them through the trees. Had they gotten any closer since the last time she’d looked, maybe ten minutes ago? She couldn’t tell.

  “They’re not gonna stop,” Little Jack said. It had been spoken as a dry and inescapable fact, in the same way Nilla had heard her father put things many times. In the glow of the lantern that Nilla held before her by the wire handle around her wrists, Little Jack was a creature of the forest hardly recognizable as an eight-year-old boy: hollow-eyed, bloody and muddy.

  “You look like some kind of monster,” she said, as if teasing her brother at this awful moment could remove them from the moment itself.

  “Ha ha,” he replied, but tonelessly. “And you’ve got alligator dookey in your hair.”

  They both realized at the same time that this kind of talk was not going to help anything.

  “There aren’t any alligators around here,” Nilla said, at the same time moving the light from side to side with her heart in her mouth. The way ahead was as the way behind had been, a morass of muddy earth that sucked at their feet, low thorny brush, thickets of prickly palmettos and thin pines that had been warped into grotesque shapes by the wind off the lake. The lake itself was maybe twenty or thirty yards off to the right, through the scrubs. Across its expanse night reigned supreme, not a single dot of light anywhere.

  But the two lights behind them were coming, and Nilla knew her brother was right; likely the man and woman had killed Mr. Hartley, and they were not going to stop.

  “We gotta keep goin’,” Little Jack said. “Can’t you put that light out? If you do, they can’t follow us.”

  “I’m not walkin’ in here in the full dark. Either of us break a leg and…I don’t want to think about it.” She had considered that already, weighed the possibilities as much as she could—including the possibility of coming upon alligators, a nest of snakes or the wild boars that her daddy had once told her roamed around near the lake—and decided the light had to stay. One thing they could do, she figured, was to turn to the left away from the lake and head in that direction, which would be sort of south or maybe southwest. That would give them a better chance of finding a road. But was there even a road up in here within miles? She had no idea.

  What had gotten on her mind and stayed there the last ten minutes or so was not the man and woman following them but what had happened to her father and Curtis.

  “Let’s go!” Little Jack urged.

  Nilla nodded, but she took a moment to try to calm her mind, to steady herself, and then she called to her listener. :Curtis?:

  There was no reply. She didn’t feel connected to him, in that usual way of feeling the energy between them like hearing the faint crackling of the records her mama played. She didn’t know if she was getting through or not…or the terrible thought, that Curtis—and her father too—were either badly hurt or dead. She tried again, and a third time. :Curtis, please,: she said. :Answer me.:

  But still there was no reply from her friend, and she stood hearing only the sound of the night insects after the rain, their declarations of chirrupings and clickings returning to full volume.

  She looked back over her shoulder again. Now she could tell for sure that the lights were closer. She figured that the muddy earth would be just as sticky on the shoes of the man and woman behind them as it was on their own shoeless feet—maybe worse—but it was time to move.

  “All right,” she told her brother, and they went on.

  ****

  “Okay, haul him out.”

  “What the fuck are we doin’ here?”

  “Got an idea, Monty. You and Fido just get him on the ground.”

  Fresh pain wracked Curtis as he was pushed and pulled over the truck’s side. He landed in a crumpled heap on gravelled earth. The flashlight was shone into his eyes again; he could see only through the left, as the right was almost swollen shut.

  “You done a job on that face,” said a voice that Curtis thought was Whipper’s. “Hey, boy!” A boot’s toe nudged Curtis roughly in the ribs. “What you been up to tonight?”

  Curtis shook his two-ton head, unable to communicate any more than that. He thought he heard something through the pain; it was a faint and garbled :Curtazzzzz. Pliss. Ser Me.:

  “He ain’t gonna talk.” Was that Fido? Curtis reckoned Fido likely had no idea what damage he’d done. “Must’ve been up to no good or he would’a been home. What are we gonna do with him?”

  “Rusty Upton and Tater Britt fixed that one they caught last week over in St. Charles.”

  Monty was speaking, with a measure of pride to relate a job well-done. “Kicked his teeth in and sent him runnin’ through them woods naked as a blackbird.”

  “Tater was in on that?” Fido asked. “Shit, I talked to him couple’a days ago, he didn’t say nothin’ about it.”

  “Yeah, he was in on it. Hell, you talk to Tater…he knows some fellas swung a nigger up in St. Tammany.”

  “Naw! Really?”

  “Really. Gimme a drink ’fore you finish the jug off, you sot.”

  “Whipper, we gonna fix this one? I can kick his teeth in from right here.”

  “We’ll fix him, all right. You and Monty pick him up.”

  Curtis was pulled to his feet. The light seared his good eye. His heart was pumping hard and he felt the crawl of blood over his lips and chin from the broken lump of his nose.

  “Nigger,” Whipper said close to his face, “we don’t like to get rough, but your kind just asks for it. Just begs to be knocked back in your place, ’cause you don’t know what’s good for you. Out here in the night, causin’ shit. No, we don’t like to get rough.”

  “Fuck it! We are rough!” said Fido, with a crazed cackle.

  “Gimme the jug,” Whipper said. Curtis could hear him chug down the ’shine. “Okay, take it,” he told one of the others as he handed it back.

  Then Whipper hit him in the mouth with a hard-knuckled fist.

  Curtis’s lower lip was split open and two front teeth on the bottom row were knocked into his mouth. Red comets streaked through his head. His legs sagged and he would’ve fallen if the other two weren’t holding him up.

  “Nice one, Whipper,” Fido said. “Couldn’t’a done better myself.”

  “Best is yet to be,” Whipper said.

  There was a stretch of silence, and then Curtis heard Monty quietly say, “We could swing him, if we had a mind to.”

  No one else spoke.

  Curtis’s legs were still rubbery. As if on its own accord
his right hand came up to grasp at the front of Whipper’s shirt, but Whipper quickly slapped it away and said, “Don’t put your dirty fingers on me, boy!”

  Monty said, “I think he is the one looked at Charlene. Skinny and all. ’Bout the same age, I figure. Yep, he’s likely the one. Runnin’ loose up in here at night and all…it ain’t right. We could swing him, if we could get us some rope.”

  “Got a better idea. Gimme another swig.” When Whipper had downed it, Curtis braced himself for another blow but it did not come…at least, not yet. “Strip him naked,” Whipper said.

  At that, Curtis tried to fight. He started thrashing for all he was worth, but he realized within a few seconds that he wasn’t worth a plugged nickel.

  Whipper hit him on the left cheekbone with a brutal strength born of either practice or pure animal ferocity, and probably some of both. The blow rocked Curtis’s head to the side and put out the last of his fading light. He was aware of falling, aware of sharp edges of gravel pressing into his cheek, and then he knew no more until he heard one of their voices fade in, saying, “…some kind of uniform?”

  “Ain’t no soldier, that’s for sure.”

  “Could be he’s run away from prison? Maybe a chain gang?”

  “Naw.” That was Fido’s drawl. “He’d be wearin’ stripes.”

  “Well what the hell kind of uniform is it, then?” Monty asked.

  “Hell if I know,” said Whipper. “Movie house usher, maybe.”

  “Movie house usher? Niggers ain’t got their own movie houses! Do they?” No one could supply an answer, so Monty went on. “And how come he’s out here at night wearin’ a movie house usher uniform?”

  “I don’t know and I don’t care,” Whipper told him. “All I know is, they’s ways to swing him other than a rope and a tree limb. Get everythin’ off, his drawers and socks too.”

  “I ain’t touchin’ his drawers.”

  “Well step aside then, I’ll do it. You reach over there and get the bag.”

  “The bag? What for?”

  “’Cause I said to. Go on, get it done!”

  Curtis heard a sliding sound and a chorus of rattlings. He felt his underwear being pulled off him, then his socks, and he thought he must be lying completely naked in the gravel.

  “Throw all his damn clothes in the back of the truck. Shoes too,” Whipper directed. “Gimme the bag, Monty. Pick him up and drag him yonder. That boxcar over there’ll do.”

  Curtis felt their hands under his arms, and he was being dragged where they wanted him to be. He made out the shine of the flashlight’s beam on a railroad track, but the track had so many weeds around it that it was surely not near a station.

  “Right here,” Whipper said.

  Curtis heard the sound of a boxcar’s door being pushed open, the sliders shrieking from disuse.

  “Get him up in there.”

  He was lifted again, pushed forward and onto the splintery floor.

  “Drag him over there, against that wall,” Whipper directed.

  On the way, one of them punched Curtis in the ribs and drove a knuckle in for good measure. Then he was thrown down with his back against the boxcar’s wall. The light shone on him as the three stood admiring their work.

  “Okay,” said Whipper. “Gimme the bag and you two get on out.”

  “What’re you gonna do to him?”

  “Well, we ain’t gonna swing him…but we’ll let the snakes do the job for us. Get out, I’m gonna dump the bag on the floor.”

  “Shit, Whipper!” Fido said. “You gonna dump all twelve of ’em? What about the rodeo? You got some prize-winners in there!”

  “This right here’s the prize. We’ll come back and snatch ’em up again…say give it twenty-four hours. Anyway, I can always find more of ’em. Back up, now.”

  One of them gave a harsh laugh. “Hot damn!” said Monty. “In twenty-four hours this nigger’ll be a dead dog!”

  “Yep,” Whipper agreed. “That’s the idea.”

  Curtis listened then to the ominous silence. It was broken by the noise of what he took to be rattlesnakes being shaken out of the burlap bag between himself and the boxcar’s door. The sound of angry rattlings made the flesh crawl at the back of Curtis’s neck.

  “Nighty-night, nigger,” Whipper said.

  “Yeah, don’t let the bedbugs bite,” said Fido, and then he gave that cackle again.

  Curtis heard the boxcar’s door slide shut. He heard the three laugh as they were striding away. The rattlings subsided. In another moment he heard the pickup truck’s engine start up. The truck boomed exhaust again, and then there was the sound of the vehicle moving away…and finally, quiet.

  But not absolute quiet, because over the beating of his heart Curtis could hear the slitherings of the rattlesnakes across each other and over the boxcar’s floor. They were searching for a place to crawl into, and he knew it was just a matter of time before they found him.

  Twelve of them, Fido had said. At least one or two were going to crawl up against his body in the next few minutes. He was going to die from the venom of a rattlesnake’s fangs, and that was that.

  Nilla, he thought, though he was unable to send out any kind of message; his mind was so jangled with pain that it was impossible to concentrate. Ludenmere might already be dead…but what about Nilla and Little Jack?

  A fine knight in shining armor he had turned out to be, he thought. If it weren’t so terrible and his face weren’t so wrecked, he might have given a grim smile to the darkness, and then he might have started sobbing.

  But instead, all he could do was lie there with his back against the wall and wait for the first snake to slither up against him…and then would come the warning rattling, and the sting of the bite on his unprotected flesh.

  Twenty-Three.

  “They’re swingin’ south,” Pearly said. “Tryin’ to find a road.”

  “We’re gonna have to swing wider and herd ’em back in,” Ginger replied. She was carrying the flashlight in her left hand and in her right was the .45 revolver. “I figured they’d give out by now. Didn’t have any food all day and I doubt they got much sleep. Won’t be long, though.”

  Pearly nodded. He kept the beam of his bull’s-eye lantern low because he was more concerned about where he was stepping. Only a few minutes ago his right foot had gone into muck that had seized him up so hard it had been an effort to pull out and he’d almost left his shoe in it. The earth was softer than it had been, and pools of water rose up to fill their footprints. Nearly hidden in the knee-high weeds and brambles were patches of darker mud that he feared were as thick as glue and just as viscous.

  “Got to get ’em before daylight,” Ginger said, walking ahead of Pearly a few paces, but she was being careful with her footing too. “Scoop ’em up, take ’em back and hit it to Mexico.”

  “You sure we need ’em?” he had to ask. “Odds are they’re gonna get lost out here.” It had occurred to him that he and Ginger might also get themselves lost, but he didn’t want to dwell on that. As long as they stayed near the lakeshore, they could find their way back. Above them the clouds were beginning to break open and a few stars were showing through the wisps but there was no sight of a moon. “You sure we need ’em?” he asked again.

  “We need ’em. If Ludenmere and that driver aren’t done for, we’ve still got trouble, but as long as we have those brats, the cops are gonna back off. Nothin’ they can do to us with those kids in the car.”

  “Yeah,” Pearly said, but he was still thinking that this whole thing had been more about Ginger’s revenge on a rich man instead of the kidnapping itself. That is, if Donnie had been telling the truth about her past. He saw that Ginger had begun to change their direction, heading a few degrees more to the south to herd the kids back toward the lake. He decided to probe Donnie’s story, as much as he dared. “So,” he said, “you had a kid once?”

  She didn’t reply.

  “Donnie told me,” he continued. “He said you—”


  “He was a liar,” she interrupted. “Liked lyin’ to people to stir things up.”

  “So you never did have a kid?”

  Again, it was a time before she answered. “When did you and Donnie ever have a talk about shit like that?”

  “We just did. You were asleep.”

  “Now I know that’s a lie.”

  Pearly didn’t want to explain any further about the episode with her muttering in the chair and lost in some kind of delirium. But he couldn’t let this go, it seemed important to clear up. “Donnie said…after your kid got killed…you wound up in a—”

  She spun on him and put the light in his face.

  “Hear me good,” she said, and her voice was like a razor at his throat. “Donnie was a goddamned liar. He deserved what he got back there because he was stupid too, and he couldn’t take orders. Because of him, look where we are. Okay, you were right…I shouldn’t have pulled him in but I needed a third and it needed to be a man. He was a sorry-ass liar and what happened to him had been comin’ a long time. Got it?”

  “Sure,” Pearly said. His voice was easy but he was as tight inside as a wound-up steel spring ready to burst. “That light in my eyes is not gonna help me move any faster, darlin’.”

  She lowered it. “Okay,” she said. “Now quit jawin’. I figure we’re only a couple of hundred yards behind ’em. They’re gonna be havin’ as tough a time as we are walkin’ through this…likely tougher. And yes, we need ’em if we want to keep our skins before we get across the border. That do you for answers?”

  “It’ll do,” he said. For now, he thought. He followed her when she turned away from him and started off again. It came to his mind that he could slide the .38 out of its shoulder holster, drill her in the back of the head and be on his way to Mexico with all that money for himself, but she was right about needing the kids. He might admire Bonnie and Clyde but he didn’t want to end up on a slab, riddled with holes like their corpses were. No…drastic action in that regard could wait until later. If she got down to Mexico with him, how could he trust her not to plunge a knife into his heart as he slept, her being a nuthouse case? Two hundred and fifteen thousand dollars, with only one owner…damn, that sounded nice.