The Hunt Club

by Bret Lott

  He shook his head, and Mom turned to him, said, “Just shut the hell up, would you, please? Won’t you just shut the hell up? Has anybody ever told you you’re just an asshole?” She touched my forehead, said, “Excuse my language, but I’ve been having to listen to this all day long, him and his police-boy stories. And I’m getting sick of it.”

  “That was a comedy,” he went on, “that videotape, which we confiscated too, her with her fat turkey legs chained up and wrapped around his skinny nigger butt.” He was just talking, happy at the sound of his voice. “But it turns out they had a fight,” he said, “right in the middle of this Mandingo thing they got going, and he up and swallows her key. Took two days before that brother let loose of what he was holding, and I’m not the one went pawing through it, I tell you what. No sir. It was the brother himself we made do it.” He laughed again. “Now, they were losers. But you all.” He took another long swallow, emptied it, then pointed the bottle at me. “You all are one fucking loser family. The Dillards.” He burped again. “A blind man, a snot-nosed runt, and a cracker bitch to boot. One flicking loser family.”

  “Don’t say a word, Huger,” Unc said again.

  But I wasn’t sure if I even could. My tongue had swollen up, the whole left side of my face a sandbag, heavy and fat, and I reached up, touched it.

  Nothing. It hadn’t swollen, far as I could tell. Just cold flesh, my cheek, my jaw.

  “Don’t go to moving around,” Mom said. “Don’t try moving around or anything at all, Huger.” Then her chin started to quiver again, all this just like two days before.

  But where were we? And why weren’t they just letting us go? Hadn’t Unc told them they could have the land?

  “Unc?” I said, turning to him, my hand still to my dead jaw, the word out of me more a grunt for how big my tongue’d gone.

  “Be quiet, boy,” Unc said again.

  “Might ought to listen to that bad boy Leland Dillard,” Yandle said, and burped again. “He’s been around the block a time or two.” He laughed, pointed the empty bottle at him this time. “Looks like somebody done backed over him a time or two, too.” He cocked back his arm, and for a second I thought he meant to throw the bottle at Unc, just for fun.

  But he didn’t, only shot it out into the woods behind us, and I heard the rush of small sounds through thick branches, the bottle caught a moment or two in the brush before the sounds stopped.

  I sat up, though Mom didn’t want me to, and pulled myself to my knees, just like Unc. Mom didn’t have leg irons on but had a piece of rope tied to her ankle, the other end knotted into a spike, just like what Patrick and Reynold did with the dogs out in their yard.

  And I could see way off into the woods behind the truck what looked like a lighted window, the barest glow of a lamp through a window the size of a postage stamp from where I was.

  “So once the aforementioned cracker bitch little miss mother of the year here discovered my associates on the premises of Hungry Neck Hunt Club HQ”—Yandle laughed again, shook his head—“namely your fucking trailer, Leland, we had no choice but to apprehend the suspect rather than allow her to escape.” His words were sliding together now, a sound I knew was the first slip into being drunk from all those times we’d sat around and drank Colt 45 under the Mark Clark back home. Boxes were piled up in the bed of Ravenel’s truck, the boxes catching light now and again from the fire. Yandle reached behind him, pulled up another bottle from an ice chest there. He held it with the arm in the sling, screwed off the cap with his free hand. He sipped at it, wiped his mouth with that good arm. “Seems she’d seen us planting produce around the place, got all hot and bothered, and proceeded to knock shit out of Patrick and Reynold.” He took another drink. “Feisty bitch.”

  “They were carrying equipment into the trailer,” Mom said to me, almost in a whisper. “Grow lights and spray bottles and hoses and bags and bags of marijuana and—” She paused. “You know what I mean, grow lights?”

  I nodded, closed my eyes for the pain again. Grow lights. Pot.

  Weed. This was about weed?

  Goods, of course. They were growing stuff out here. But where was here?

  And now here came the doctor himself, Cleve Ravenel up out of the dark, his white hair orange in the light. He had on camos like every other time I’d ever seen him, and he was carrying another box, him breathing heavy. He set it in the bed, pushed it back to the others.

  “The doctor of kind bud,” Yandle said. “If it hadn’t been for that little bastard over there falling down on top of me,” Yandle said, and nodded at me, looked back at Ravenel, “I’d be a little more service to you this evening, Cleve Ravenel, DKB. Doctor of Kind Bud.” Yandle slowly rubbed his shoulder, the neck of the bottle held between his thumb and first finger. “But life takes its turns, don’t it, DKB?” He laughed.

  Ravenel shook his head. “Why the hell I have to deal with you is beyond my comprehension,” he said, and wiped at his forehead with the sleeve of his jacket.

  He looked over at Unc. “I’m sorry about all this, Leland,” he said. “This taking you hostage and all. I’ll make good for you. I will.”

  Unc said nothing, didn’t move.

  “You got to deal with me,” Yandle went on, too loud, his eyes on Ravenel, “because I’m the only one knows who the hell to distribute to out thisaway, and who knows how to keep anybody wanting in from getting in out thisaway.” There was an edge to his voice now, something like what he’d used wanting to take charge of everything at the crime scene. “You fucking pasty-face doctor types living South of Broad wouldn’t know how to sell a kilo if a College of Charleston undergrad walked up and waved a thousand-dollar bill in your face. Only kind of work you’re comfortable with is putting on your candy-ass latex gloves and giving a finger up the ass of some ninth-generation Pinckney.” He stopped, tipped back the bottle, took a swipe at his mouth with his sleeve again. “Truth is, I’d rather be out here and take billy-club hits at trailer trash any day. Any day, you fat motherfucker.”

  Ravenel stood there, hands on his hips, his eyes on Yandle, staring hard at him. He tilted his head to one side the smallest bit.

  I glanced at Unc. He hadn’t moved, eyes still swollen shut, those black streaks of blood like some kind of tattoo down his face.

  Mom was sitting next to me now, and put her arms around me, held me to her like I was six. But it felt good with what seemed about to turn into something past the ugly it already was, all of it out of our hands not fifteen feet away.

  “And so now we have three hostages who know precisely what the hell has gone on here on their own property,” Ravenel said. “Three hostages, and not a clue in the entire animal world what we’re supposed to do with them, because you and your gap-toothed little minions get it into your heads you’re going to go over and frame Leland Dillard, just in case your SLED pals figure out our little enterprise here.” He shook his head. “And then the woman shows up, and your boys decide to play take-the-hostage.”

  “How was they supposed to figure she’d show up?” Yandle said, and put his hand with the bottle to the bed, steadying himself, or holding himself back, I couldn’t tell which. “How’s they to figure she’d pop up and screw everything to pieces? SLED’s showing up tomorrow morning, my man tells me, to go over every square inch of the whole club land, this backwater parcel even Leland Dillard forgets he owns. We ain’t got enough time to liquidate and tear it all down, I figure, so why not go ahead and plant evidence at Leland’s? Where’s the harm in hammering a couple more kilos into that old man’s coffin?”

  Ravenel stopped shaking his head. “There you go, thinking again. That’s your first mistake.” He paused. “Big mistake.”

  “You son of a bitch,” Yandle said, and before I could even think of what I was watching, Yandle brought the bottle up from beside him on the bed, and broke it against Ravenel’s head.

  I jumped, like I’d been shocked, my stomach knotted up and tight, and Mom squeezed down tighter on me, squ
ealed, all in that second.

  “Hold on,” Unc said, his voice cut low, just for us.

  Ravenel gave a sort of failed groan, just a sound like the air in him had no choice but to leave, and fell, back and away from the truck.

  Yandle pushed himself off the tail of the Ram, looked down at him. He still had hold of the bottle neck, the broken end ready now for whatever else might piss him off. He put his boot toe to Ravenel’s leg, pushed at it. Ravenel moaned, the sound almost nothing.

  “Fucking doctors,” Yandle said. “The whole reason this whole thing is coming down—doctors.”

  He turned to us, pointed the broken bottle at Unc. “If it hadn’t been for your doctor’s wife coming along and blowing away her hubby’s head, we could of been set up and operating here from now till kingdom come. But no. Doctors. Fucking doctors.”

  Mom held me tighter, took in quick breaths, her face to my shoulder, and I held her.

  “Good idea,” Yandle said. “Just close your eyes and pray this all goes away.”

  Now came footsteps, a rush of them, pounding through brush and stomping toward us, and Reynold came into the firelight, breathing hard, his bald head like an orange bulb in the light, flannel shirt and jeans on. He bent to Ravenel, took in a breath or two, looked up at Yandle. Patrick showed up behind him, chest moving for the distance they’d run from the greenhouse. He had on a down vest over long underwear, jeans. He gave a big sniff through his nose, rubbed at it, shook his head.

  He cut his eyes to Yandle, who’d sat back on the tail.

  “This,” Patrick said, and took in another breath, “is a fucking twisted way to try and cover our ass.”

  Reynold stood. “What in the hell did you do that for?” he said, and took in a breath, another. “This is the man who knows the judge, Doug. This is the man who knows the fucking judge. And you go and break a bottle on the son of a bitch.”

  “Just shut up,” Yandle said. “Just shut the fuck up and let me think a minute.”

  He gave what was left of the bottle the same throw he’d given the other empty, the bottle making the same small rush of muffled sounds, then leaned his head down, rubbed at his eyes with his free hand. Patrick said, “But we wasn’t supposed to brang down this kind of shit, Doug, we wasn’t supposed to go on and smash the fucking moneyman’s head.”

  Yandle shot him a look, and the three of them started to arguing and whining at one another, hollering and pointing back into the woods to that lit window, then at each other, fingers to chests and pounding and how it all wasn’t supposed to fall like this.

  And yet even with what I’d just seen, a bottle broken on the side of a man’s head, a body gone limp, I was thinking on what Yandle’d said just then: We could of been set up and operating here from now till kingdom come.

  What did that mean? Weren’t Cleve Ravenel and his pals supposed to buy Hungry Neck? Wasn’t that what this was supposed to be about, our being back at nine o’clock so we could meet up with Thigpen and tell him whatever he and the people he worked for, those men who counted, wanted to hear? That Unc’d sell them the place, then get Mom back, be left alone to try and live the rest of our lives with all that’d happened?

  Where was Thigpen?

  And marijuana. Stupid shit was all this was over. But crated up in popcorn and shipped on a container? The people Yandle knew were nothing more than the lost clods who lived out here in the woods. That black-and-white couple with the leg irons’d probably been his customers, the leg irons some sort of bartering deal. What were they shipping it away for? In popcorn?

  And why would Yandle think he’d be in business for life, if the plan was to sell Hungry Neck and make it another Hilton Head?

  I didn’t get it, didn’t get any of this: what looked like the tearing down of some kind of pot greenhouse out here in the middle of nowhere, right here on Hungry Neck; Cleve Ravenel taken out by his own man; Mom taken hostage because she’d seen something she ought not to have; and no mention of selling Hungry Neck at all.

  I looked to Unc, Mom still pressed to my shoulder, Yandle, Patrick, and Reynold still at it. I whispered, “Unc?”

  “Be quiet,” he whispered. His head was bowed now, forehead on his knees.

  “But Unc,” I whispered, “what about selling off Hungry Neck?”

  “Boy,” he whispered, and on that single word I knew he meant for me just to shut the hell up, that that was the most important thing I might could do at this particular moment.

  But I went ahead, asked him what I asked, because I was scared, scared at not knowing a damned thing. I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything, and I knew Unc did, by the way he’d said nothing.

  I whispered, “Where is Thigpen?”

  Unc lifted his head toward me, and I saw only half his face now, him looking at me, the one half moving and moving in the firelight, the other dark, lost, and I wondered if finally he was going to answer me, even if he’d told me to shut up.

  But there was something different about him looking at me, I saw, in the tilt of his head, the line of his chin. He wasn’t looking at me, but past me, above my shoulder, and I turned, even with Mom still pressed into my shoulder.

  There sat Thigpen on a pale horse, hands on the pommel of the saddle.

  “Right here,” he said, smiling down at me.

  He had on a heavy coat, jeans, that straw cowboy hat with the sides folded up, the front end bent down. He had a holster and belt at his waist.

  “Leland,” he said, and nodded.

  I glanced to Unc, saw him nod back. We’d none of us heard him coming up for the noise of the fighting. Only Unc’d heard. Only Unc.

  It was a strange moment, his being here, a moment jammed with too much feeling on my part: relief, because this was the man who’d shoved that truck off the road; and there was fear, too, his presence inside all this stuff happening in front of us, none of it I could figure out; and there was in me, too, the feeling this was logical, that all would be revealed to me in a moment, now that the last person in this parade was here. All that just in his smile down at me from up on that pale horse.

  Yandle, Patrick, and Reynold stopped hollering, froze.

  Mom stiffened up, scooted around to see who was behind her.

  “What the fuck you doing with my horse?” Reynold said, and I saw him out of the corner of my eye take a step away from Patrick and Yandle and toward Thigpen. “What the fuck you doing with my Jeb Stuart?”

  Yandle said, “Glad you finally showed up, Tommy,” and put his free hand to Patrick’s chest, pushed him off, and drew his gun, held it on him. His arm was stiff in front of him, just like on TV and in the movies, and he glanced from Thigpen to Patrick, pointed the gun at Reynold, at Patrick, then Reynold. Firelight played off the barrel. “Caught these sons of bitches trying to dismantle a greenhouse back in here. Leland Dillard here and his nephew and the little lady here was in on it, too, and best I can figure they’ve committed at least a half dozen felonies.” His words still had that slur on them, but now his voice was bright, edged up and too quick.

  Neither Patrick nor Reynold even looked at him, their eyes on Thigpen.

  “Wasn’t sure how I was going to get backup in on this one,” Yandle went on, “but now you showed up, we can go ahead and—”

  “Shut up, Doug,” Thigpen said. He was looking at Reynold, still a step closer to him than Yandle and Patrick.

  Yandle’s gun moved down a bit. He looked at Thigpen. “But Tommy, we got us a 326 and a 372 on our—”

  “So, this your horse?” Thigpen said to Reynold. He leaned a little forward, sat back again, the saddle creaking with it all.

  “Damn fucking straight it is,” Reynold said, and took another step. “Now get the fuck off him right now, before I knock shit out of you, you cocksucking—”

  “This the one you take on your drives over to Leland’s deer hunts?” Thigpen cut in. He was smiling.

  “Who you think you are, you son of a bitch?” Reynold said. “You think ’cause you
wear a fucking badge you can go on ahead and steal somebody’s horse?” He started around the fire then, his bald head glittering with sweat, his hands in fists.

  Pigboy and Fatback. Yandle and Thigpen, showing up at the same time to the club, the two of them back there with us and looking at the body. They were together.

  But, no.

  No, they weren’t.

  It was there, in front of me the whole time: set up and operating till kingdom come.

  And Thigpen’s words: The only way through this all is for him to do what he’s been asked to do. You tell him things’ll be fixed. All’s he got to do is what’s been asked.

  Two different stories.

  And only now did I understand why Unc just wanted me to shut up: if I opened my mouth, Yandle might figure out something he didn’t yet know, namely, that there were other things at stake: the fact Constance Dupree Simons hadn’t murdered her husband, that somebody named Pigboy and Fatback had been ordered to void Middleton, that all of Hungry Neck itself was about to be sold off.

  Cleve Ravenel, it occurred to me, was just feeding off both sides of the fence.

  Greedy.

  If it hadn’t been for your doctor’s wife coming along and blowing away her hubby’s head, Yandle said. He didn’t know Constance didn’t do it.

  Reynold stepped past Mom and me, his smell as thick and nasty as the floor of his horse trailer, and moved toward Thigpen, and then, like it wasn’t even happening, Thigpen drew the gun from his holster, said, “That’s good, because if old Jeb here is the one you take on your deer drives, I don’t imagine he’s much gun-shy.” He pointed the gun at Reynold and fired on him, three shots quick in a row.

  I’d heard pistols before. I’d fired them. I’d fired at cans, into trees, into woods I couldn’t know were empty. I’d shot squirrels before with a pistol, even shot a crow once for no good reason other than that I had a pistol and here was a crow.