The Hunt Club

by Bret Lott

  But the sound back then was nothing next to the roar and flash off the barrel of this pistol, the flash reaching like thick red daggers to Reynold, with each dagger the sick thump of a bullet into his chest, the clean, quick whistle of them right on out his back. All three bullets hit the fire, where a nearly burnt-through log split in two, rolled a few inches, sent up sparks.

  I saw all this, in just this instant.

  He hit ground only a couple feet from Mom and me, his face turned to us, his bald head orange for the light from the fire. He blinked five or six times in a row, his arms still at his side. He was stiff, tensed over, eyes blinking away, and the hand I could see wasn’t in a fist anymore, but the fingers were spread wide, wide as they could get. He let go a deep breath from all the way down in him, a sound far away and heavy, like he was drowning in mud.

  His hands went limp, his eyes closed, and I saw in the firelight steam up from his mouth, where that breath had let out, and steam up, too, from there in his chest, those holes.

  “How old are you, Huger Dillard?” Thigpen said.

  I turned. There sat Thigpen, one hand still to the pommel, the gun pointed at the ground.

  I opened my mouth. I blinked, felt my throat go dry. I hadn’t breathed yet.

  “How old?” Thigpen said.

  “Leave the boy alone,” Unc said. He hadn’t moved, his arms around his legs, his face toward Thigpen.

  “I said, how old?” Thigpen adjusted himself in the saddle. The saddle creaked, the horse twitched one ear.

  I swallowed hard, whispered, “Fifteen.”

  “Damn,” Thigpen said. “I didn’t see my first murder till I was twenty-one.” He slowly shook his head, smiled. “Must be true what they’re saying about how fast kids grow up these days.”

  “Leave him alone, Tommy,” Unc said.

  Then Mom screamed.

  It started with a rasping breath in, long and hard, and for a second I thought maybe Reynold wasn’t dead after all, that here he was trying to breathe in all the air there was to breathe. But then the scream itself came, pierced me and shocked me all at once, Mom finally reacting to what’d happened. Here was a dead man, shot in front of our eyes, fallen at our feet.

  I took hold of her and tried to push us away, tried to scramble away from this body, only to find the leg irons were still there on my ankles, that Mom was still tied to her own spike, and we had nowhere to go except here, spiked to the ground. Still Mom screamed.

  Then Thigpen fired again, and I turned, saw he’d shot this one off into the air.

  I felt my breaths in and in too quick, Mom doing the same. She held on to me, her arms around me too hard, though they were exactly what I wanted: Mom holding me.

  “Tommy?” Yandle said.

  His gun was down now, his mouth open. He stared up at Thigpen.

  Patrick was gone.

  “Unlock them,” Thigpen said.

  “But Tommy,” Yandle whispered, “why’d you shoot—”

  “Do it,” Thigpen said, and cocked the hammer.

  Yandle quick shook his head, like he’d been slapped awake. Mom whimpered beside me. Unc looked at Thigpen.

  Yandle put his gun back in the holster, reached into the front pocket of his fatigue jacket, pulled out a key chain, all with his eyes on Thigpen.

  “We was just running a pot farm back here,” Yandle said as he started around the fire, his steps slow, his hand with the keys trying to find the right one without the use of that arm in a sling. His voice had emptied itself of that police-boy pitch, now just a Walterboro nothing. “Cleve Ravenel come to me one afternoon looking to make some money, told me he could bankroll a little operation back here.” He nodded toward Unc, still without taking his eyes off Thigpen. “Figured Hungry Neck’d be the smartest place, what with a blind man watching over the place.” He paused. “And a snot-nose runt his only helper.” He tried a laugh. Still his hand fumbled with the keys. “This parcel back here’s tough as hell to get into, so we set up in here.”

  He stopped altogether, forgot the keys, like something had occurred to him, a big idea. “Then the fucking doctor’s wife come in and killed the son of a bitch, which of course makes this land hotter’n shit, what with SLED crawling around, looking for whatever the hell it is they may want to find, chief among it all maybe, we’re thinking, our little operation. I hear tell from Mitch over to the office SLED is coming in here tomorrow morning, going to give Hungry Neck a comb-through.”

  He was just jabbering now, talking and talking, trying to reach something in Thigpen.

  “So we’re liquidating. Getting the hell out of Atlanta before it burns to the ground.” He tried the same laugh again.

  “Unlock them,” Thigpen said.

  Yandle stood there a second longer, then looked down at the key chain in his hand, shook his head, finally found the right one.

  He went to Unc first, knelt in front of him, slipped the key into the clamp on Unc’s left foot, and the clamp fell open. He pulled the key out, opened the other, his eyes always on Thigpen.

  Now both Unc’s feet were free, but he didn’t move, only held his legs with his arms.

  Yandle stood. He was coming toward us and had to step over Reynold’s body, there between us and the fire.

  He knelt at Mom’s feet, took the rope her ankles were tied with, and started working the knot at the spike with his one hand until Mom’s left ankle was free. He was looking up at Thigpen, scared shitless, his hand shaking, his face wet with sweat that glistened in the firelight. Mom pulled her foot away from him hard, jammed herself into me deeper to get away from that body there and at the same time trying to hold on to me, like she might be able to protect me from something.

  “Tommy, you can’t arrest me,” Yandle said. “You can’t.”

  “Finish up,” Thigpen said.

  “Tommy,” Yandle said, “Tommy, we can work this together. We can figure out how to make it look like Reynold and—”

  “Finish,” he said, and now the saddle creaked again, the horse’s ear twitched.

  Yandle turned to my leg irons, put the key in. He fished it one way and another, and then mine fell open, and I pushed back and away from him, Mom with me, the two of us scooting hard and fast and away.

  Yandle stood, faced Thigpen. His good hand was out to his side, palm up, the key chain hanging from a finger. He said, “You can’t arrest me, Tommy. I got enough shit on you to sink a ship. Now.” He lifted his hand up a little higher. “Either we work this together and figure out a way through this that’s going to be mutually beneficial to the both of us, or—”

  “I ain’t going to arrest you,” Thigpen said. He was smiling now, and I caught a glint of firelight off that gold tooth of his. He leaned his head to one side. “Way I see it, you come out a hero. You out here solo stumble on Reynold, and Leland and Eugenie and the boy out here to their Mary Jane hideaway. Patrick’s got to be halfway to Jacksonville by now, the chickenshit.” He chuckled. “Then all hell breaks loose, and in the ensuing gun battle everybody, Dr. Cleve Ravenel included, just plain gets killed.” He leaned his head the other way. “This, of course, includes you.”

  “What?” Yandle said, and he gave the little shake of his head again, like he’d been slapped one more time.

  “Get out your gun.”

  “What you mean, Tommy?” Yandle whispered. He took a step back, then another.

  Unc moved then, his head turned to the fire, looking past it to the other side and Ravenel’s truck. It was the smallest move, only his head turning, his back straightening a bit.

  He heard something.

  “Tommy, you don’t mean to—” Yandle started.

  Then it all happened, all of it in four seconds, maybe five.

  Patrick stood from behind the tail of the pickup, there where Cleve Ravenel lay. He had a shotgun, quick leveled it at Thigpen. “You fucking killed my brother!” he shouted, the words tight and wild and broken, and he fired.

  Here was another flash, this one b
igger, the roar louder, and he worked the action on the gun, fired again.

  But in the piece of time between the action being worked and him firing, Thigpen fired, and the next flash off Patrick’s shotgun went up at a crazy angle, and I saw Patrick’s forehead burst, the way a melon will burst when fired upon. Just like that, and he fell, disappeared behind the pickup.

  Now Yandle’s whole body was shaking, I saw in this same second, but he still pulled his gun out, held it up, pointed at Thigpen.

  I looked up to Thigpen and the horse. The horse sat there, stone still, Thigpen leaned way over to his left in the saddle, his left shoulder hunched up, that smile twisted tight into a grimace. He’d been hit.

  His gun was on Yandle, and he fired.

  Yandle screamed. I flinched, and Mom too.

  It was a scream beside us and in us, a scream twisted and clotted up and too loud, Yandle sprawled on the ground. His boots were there at Reynold’s head, almost kicked it for how his feet twisted and turned, like he was climbing a set of stairs.

  Then I saw his right arm, the one he’d held the gun in. The fingers were splayed out, just like Reynold’s had been, but they were moving, twitching, one finger and another and another, twitching. The gun lay about a foot away from his hand, just right there, on the ground.

  And there, about halfway up the sleeve of his fatigue jacket, was what looked like a splintered piece of wood poking up through the material, the material ripped open, that piece of white splintered wood shiny in the firelight.

  It was bone.

  All this in four seconds, maybe five. The time it takes to breathe in and breathe out.

  Yandle stopped the scream a moment. His head snapped back and hit the ground, and he swallowed in quick breaths, his arm in the sling there across his chest.

  “One-in-a-million shot,” Thigpen said, on his words the fact he’d been hit: his voice was hard, sharp, no air to it. He still held the gun on Yandle. “You idiot rednecks have made this harder than it had to be.” He took in a breath, held it a moment, let it out. “One in a million. That bullet tunneled right down the bone in your forearm, blew out the whole thing.” He took another breath, held it, let it out. “One in a million.”

  Thigpen lay over the pommel, sort of rolled down the side of the horse until his feet hit ground, all with the gun out in front of him, aimed at Yandle. Still the horse hadn’t moved.

  Mom pinched down on my arms and chest, holding me, her face in my shoulder. She took in a thousand short breaths, inside each one a shard of a whimper. Still Unc sat there, his face to Thigpen, who took a step toward Yandle.

  Yandle was groaning now, a dark sound full of itself and this night and that shiny bone, and the fact he knew he was dead. The fingers of his right hand still twitched each on their own, but the arm itself lay there, dead already, and now he started to try and roll himself toward the gun, as though he might use that hand in the sling with it, and as though Thigpen with the gun pointed down at him weren’t walking toward him. He rocked himself, his eyes darting again and again at Thigpen, then to the gun, with each rocking of his body a short, sharp gasp coming out of him for the pain and the knowledge of what was to come.

  And here I was, only watching. I thought for an instant to grab the gun, there only three or four feet from me, but I let that instant go, because I was afraid, and I saw in Yandle’s eyes that, in fact, the same thing was going to happen to us, that we were going to die, too, and that trying to grab up a gun would just bring it all about quicker than it would otherwise.

  “You always were nothing but an asshole,” Thigpen said to Yandle. He stood beside Reynold’s body now. The left arm of Thigpen’s coat, just below the shoulder, was torn up, a spot no bigger than a small pinecone. Patrick’d only nicked him.

  He brought up the gun, cocked it. Still Yandle rocked, faster now, the arm in the sling reaching across his body, reaching, that dead arm in the way, its fingers still twitching.

  “But I like your idea about letting this greenhouse back here serve to convict the good Leland and company. We’ll do that, leave it up, so when they come back here and find all these bodies, you’ll still be the hero. It’ll be only me here to testify to your strength and courage.”

  Still Yandle rocked, harder and faster, the gasps gone, only him moving fast for a gun he had to know he’d never get hold of.

  “And the funny thing about all this, the real hoot of it,” Thigpen said, drawing a bead on Yandle, “is that you’re going to die and don’t have a flying fucking clue what you stumbled in on.”

  Finally Yandle stopped, his chest heaving, with each breath in the same shard of a whimper Mom gave out.

  Thigpen pulled the trigger.

  Yandle screamed.

  But nothing fired. Only the empty click of a gun out of bullets.

  “Hah!” Thigpen shouted, and shook his head, looked at the gun. “Forgot I shot off six rounds.” He chuckled again, though he had to take in a breath for it. “Guess this ain’t much like some old TV show,” he said, and lowered the gun, shook open the chamber. He grimaced again as he lifted the arm that’d been shot, put that hand into his coat pocket, pulled out a handful of bullets.

  Then Unc was up, took two fast steps, all movement coming toward us, one solid shot of himself from where he’d been sitting all this while, and he clipped Thigpen from behind, his shoulder lowered, head down, all of him aiming at only what he heard, distance and position gained just from sitting there, listening.

  Thigpen fell onto Yandle’s legs, the bullets flying from his hand, and now Unc rolled across Reynold’s body and toward Mom and me.

  “Run!” Unc whispered hard, teeth together, him scrambling to stand.

  But I was only looking at him, Unc right here in my face, black blood down both his cheeks, white eyes open wide, empty and hollow and dead, dead as we were going to be a few seconds from now.

  Thigpen pushed himself up from Yandle, but Yandle kicked him now, his legs furious into Thigpen’s stomach, who doubled over, Yandle’s boots into his middle again and again.

  “Run!” Unc whispered again, though this time it was loud as a shout.

  Still Yandle kicked at Thigpen, who finally rolled over and away from him, almost into the fire. He was on his knees now, the gun still in his hand, but he was leaned over, coughing hard.

  I looked at Unc, at those eyes, eyes that seemed even in how hollow they were to hold out some hope.

  I stood.

  Mom came up with me, still holding tight to my arm, still whimpering, and Unc grabbed up my other arm, and I turned, ran, the three of us heading off into a darkness I couldn’t see into, the thin blanket of light cast from the fire gone in a matter of four or five strides.

  But we were running, away from all this.

  “Catch up to you in a few!” Thigpen called out, and coughed, then laughed, coughed again.

  And though I know I shouldn’t have, know it only slowed us down a moment or three, I turned, looked back. Already the woods were folding in on us, my feet ripping through growth, the trees and vines and all else pulling closed like a curtain between us and the fire.

  There stood Thigpen, Yandle back to rocking. Thigpen pushed in a bullet, then snapped shut the chamber. He took a step up, only a silhouette now for the fire behind him, and stood over Yandle, who stopped rocking, lifted his head, as though he might be able to sit up. He was crying now, giving out this small, high-pitched sound.

  Thigpen said something to him, something I couldn’t hear, then fired, one shot to Yandle’s head.

  His head slammed back, and for a second in the silence there came the echo of that shot.

  Thigpen looked up, still only a silhouette.

  “On my way!” he called out.

  Unc pushed me from behind.

  “Run,” he whispered, “or we die.”

  We ran.

  Mom held my right hand with both hers, still took in quick breaths, whimpering. Unc had hold of the back of my jeans jacket, held on,
and we ran.

  It was black, all of it, the ground and sky and trees, my eyes not yet adjusted to whatever light that same half-moon’d given out last night when Tabitha and I had walked back to Benjamin’s shack, and now it wasn’t just Unc was blind anymore. It was me, blind to everything that’d been going on at Hungry Neck, this place like some sort of ugly cancer of a sudden, filled with shit and death, when all these years of my life I’d thought it perfect, a place to get away from all the shit of North Charleston, shit that was right there where you could see it, the carjackings and BP minimart shootings and innocent-bystander kids shot down in the high school parking lot. Shit right there on the surface, I’d always known. But only now, tonight, did I finally realize there was shit even in the most perfect places you could imagine.

  Hungry Neck.

  My heart pounded for the running, branches brushing against my face and legs, weeds and palmetto fronds and saplings and dead branches at my feet all taking a piece of time with having to make our way through, no trails anywhere, not even a deer path I might find and follow.

  Then slowly the shadows started making their way into my eyes, light and dark giving in to let me see, while still Mom whimpered, stumbled, pulled at me, and while Unc pushed, him right behind me like I was some battering ram through it all, and I realized in this growing light of shadows and night that this was what my life had always been: the pull of Mom to some life she’d seen might be better for us close in to Charleston proper, and Unc pushing me deeper into Hungry Neck, deeper and deeper, so that with the stump my foot hit then, me losing balance a second or so but still staying up and still running, I saw that even Unc’s tossing me those keys last April, the gift of a beat-up Luv once owned by a man killed in a cafeteria half the world away, was just another way to get me deeper into this life, and into whatever it was he wanted me in it for: chauffeur, errand boy.

  His eyes.

  And though that afternoon I’d gotten the Luv I drove this land for hours, drove it like I’d known the land better than my own bedroom, then parked it out on Cemetery, where the road goes close to the Ashepoo, and where I’d looked out over the marsh and all those nameless squat islands scattered around, I didn’t know any of it.