November Mourns

by Tom Piccirilli

  Gabriel shouted, “No!”

  So, Shad thought, here it is again.

  They had called him a jonah in the slam because violence circled him without ever quite touching down on his shoulder. Instead, it would miss him and hit somebody else close by.

  The rifle blast struck Rebi in the left side of the chest. A broken cry that almost sounded like Shad’s name erupted from her mouth. Blood and viscera washed across his neck in a wave of warm brutality. Wet hair whisked across his face as she flopped sideways into his arms, slid from him, and draped dead over the bed.

  Every man wanted to be a hero for a woman, even when it was too late. It gave him a reason to stand tall. The rage made him roar. Snakes hissed and lunged. Two bit into Shad’s boots and hung on. Hart and Howell Wegg, still without expression, continued to stare. The woman in the house screamed again.

  Shad caught Lucas Gabriel’s eye and the moment lengthened further than it ever should have. He fought back a twinge, gave a huff that wasn’t quite a sigh as Gabriel, with great remorse, grimaced and started to lift his gun. The rattlers rose and closed in, slithering over Jerilyn’s body and blotting the smile from her lips.

  The rifle swung. Shad crossed his arms over his face and went barreling out the mostly shut window, where Mags’s hand was waving to him.

  Chapter Fifteen

  IN THE FEDERAL PEN THE OLD MOB GUYS SUPPOSEDLY had 812 channels of cable and sat around watching porno movies and The Godfather trilogy all day long.

  But on C-Block, the warden only let them have two hours of TV time in the afternoon. Nothing that might incite violence, suicide, depression, or sexual excitement—no action pictures, no Jerry Springer, no MTV, no Ah-nuld, not even Oprah. The Aryans used to lose their shit when the O was on, they’d start flinging their chairs, chase the homeboys down in the shower stalls. No O.

  But every once in a while the TV guide would get their programming wrong and you could catch the last half hour of some trash hit. The ones about the regular guy pushed to his limits and having to get revenge on the criminals: the sadistic sheriff, the terrorists, his evil twin brother, his cheating wife who faked her own death and framed him for the murder. He’d cut loose and tape a hand grenade in some fucker’s mouth and toss off a quip while brains flew. He’d be bashed to hell by the end but still limping along saying funny shit, and if he heard a gun cock or a rocket launcher hum, he’d always be able to dive out of the way at the last second.

  It looked easy in the flicks. The guy goes through a barroom window and the wood and glass just explode away in a shower of tiny bits like sugar candy. He does a cool diving roll, snaps onto his feet, and does a zig and a zag, breezing through the woods. Maybe one or two wild gunshots behind him, little puffs of smoke on the breeze. You couldn’t laugh too loudly or else the bulls would know somebody screwed up and there was something good on the tube.

  Jeffie O’Rourke once looked at him while they watched five minutes of some seventies Southern sadism film, an innocent guy trying to escape from the chain gang. Jeffie said, “This is the only kind of movie where the hero dies or goes to prison for life but still manages to win something.”

  “Win what?” Shad asked.

  Like that, like a Greek chorus expounding on morality, like the Stage Manager in Our Town coming out to narrate the closing scene and put some polish on the whole thing. Maybe Jeffie had answered him, Shad couldn’t remember.

  His nose poured blood and it felt like every muscle in his body had been stabbed with an awl. His forearms were covered with deep lacerations, and the briars tore at him as he came through the scrub. His face had been whipped by thistle branches and thorns still stuck out from his forehead and cheeks.

  He ran.

  It only took a minute before he was so turned around that he didn’t know what direction he was going. Gray clouds hung heavily in the sky and he couldn’t spot the sun. All he could see was the same smeared vermilion haze up there behind the ashen billowing stratus.

  He tried not to put a sound track to it but couldn’t help himself. He heard the silly banjos and redneck mouth harps. The washboard slaps and scratches as he rolled down the embankments head over ass. The catclaws dug in deeper every second.

  If he was heading back toward the ridge, all he had to do was make it across the trestle and back to his car. If he was heading farther south, he’d have to climb down the whole damn mountain before he got to the river. Maybe he could find one of the old logging or hogback trails that led to town. Otherwise, he’d either hit the cliffs or the bramble forest, both impassable.

  Rebi’s blood dried slowly on him, and she glazed his tongue.

  THE WOODS CONTINUED TO SOLIDIFY WITH OAK, ASH, stands of spruce and slash pine. Carpets of cedar, leaves, needles, and moss tore wide in his wake as he struggled to keep his feet. It was slippery as hell and he kept going down, tripping over concealed roots and logs. He sprawled on his face a couple of times and crawled past jagged tree trunks and broad-headed skinks.

  He didn’t know how close the Wegg brothers were, but he knew they’d be coming.

  Thickets swarmed around him, branches lurching in the breeze and swatting at his hair. Shad could hear the churning of water nearby and made for it.

  Looking down, he saw that he’d picked up a dirt-filled beer bottle someplace and for some reason still held on to it. It felt important to keep it with him. You didn’t question your right hand at a time like this.

  He slid down a muddy embankment and came to a creek that had become violently swollen with the rain. He had no idea if this was the same place where he’d first met Jerilyn and watched her pressing the onionskin pages into the stream, but he stared at the fast-moving brook and instantly hated it.

  Okay, so now maybe he had a reason for the bottle. The ripped, worn label peeled off with almost no prodding. He used his filthy index finger to scrawl on the back of it

  Who R U, Fucker?

  He pressed the label into the bottle and threw it in the creek. Let the bastard read that, if he could. Wherever he was.

  Shad crossed the brook and had just drifted behind some Catawba and dogwood when he heard the harsh clatter of tree limbs scraping back and forth against each other. Someone pushing through.

  He went to his knees and hit the mat of spongy cedar, turned, and peered through the bushes.

  So here came Hart and Howell Wegg—capable, efficient, and moving with deadly competence through the woods. Hart still had the rifle and Howell had stopped off to pick up his shotgun. They checked the ground for markings like they were tracking wild boar. Shad saw just how clear a trail he’d left behind him. Mauled chunks of ground, busted sticks, and bent saplings leading right to him.

  Where did that leave Lucas Gabriel? The man might think Shad had killed Jerilyn, but he’d seen Rebi die at the hands of his own thugs. Would the entire settlement keep quiet about this? Would any of them go for the sheriff?

  He kept thinking that a last-minute rescue from Dave Fox was about the best he could hope for.

  The Weggs murmured to one another as they hunted, appearing casual and even aloof. Frigid-blooded sons of bitches. How could they have lived so close to the Gabriel girls and not fallen in love?

  They had Shad cut off on this side of the creek channel, so he couldn’t circle back and return to the snake town even if he wanted to. Find that old-timer who kept asking him how his day was, pop the geezer in the chin and ransack his closet until he found a revolver.

  No, Shad was on his own.

  They saw the bottle floating away in the brook and didn’t know what to make of it. Shad was a touch surprised when he heard their clipped, formal conversation. They were discussing soil degradation, water erosion, organic content, and nutrient cycling in the area. All this just looking at the ground. Pointing here and there, seeing footprints, coming on slow and relentless.

  Last night, he’d thought they’d been polite but a little ignorant, but they were much sharper than that. Worse, they were proving
they were patient and in no hurry to make a mistake. Shad wasn’t going to last long out here with them following, and he couldn’t outrun them. He had to make a play and do it fast.

  Those movies he’d watched with Jeffie O’Rourke always had the Southern boy checking all the angles, knowing where the perfect spot for an ambush would be. He’d tie a handful of leaves to his back with a vine and become invisible, maybe walk backwards in his own tracks to fake out the cops. All these little tricks to show how much smarter he was than them.

  Shad had never felt so stupid in his life. He thought about what his father had told him. How if he had to take a life to save his own, he should.

  For a guy who’d survived two years in the can, and being out here with a couple of huckleberries ready to shoot him for something he didn’t do, you would’ve thought it would be easy, killing somebody.

  He used to see the faces of murderers on C-Block, the way their eyes would roll back in their heads with delight when they plunged the shiv in. One inch, two, then even farther, and still shoving deeper until it nicked bone and got stuck in the muscles and they couldn’t pull it out again.

  They made it seem so effortless and fun, like it meant nothing more than a quick, fierce lay. But he wasn’t built like that. The very idea of it, even now, made him snort with fear.

  When you couldn’t run away, you had to run forward.

  The only chance he had was to wait here for the Weggs to step up the embankment, and when they got to the top, he’d launch himself. He didn’t know how to take down two men with weapons, but there wasn’t any choice anymore. He had to make the suicide play.

  They were talking about the beer bottle now, wondering where it had come from, what it meant, if this was further proof of a widening sphere of pollution. They moved up the hill toward where Shad waited beneath the brush.

  His vision flared red and black. He felt the hills thinking about him again, agitated and somehow even fidgeting, wheeling toward him. But it was different now. The anxiety of the land had a loving quality to it, he sensed, like a parent pacing around the kitchen at midnight, waiting for a teenager to come home. The undercurrent of the world reached for him, apologetic in a steely inflexible way, as if sorry for the trials it forced others to endure and remorseful for its needs.

  The Weggs reached the top of the slope and Shad stood up from behind the bushes and pounced. You didn’t get much dumber than this.

  He clamped one hand around Howell Wegg’s throat. Swung wide with his other arm and knocked the shotgun aside, pointing it down toward Hart’s crotch.

  The plan—such as it was—depended on whether Hart Wegg flinched at having a shotgun aimed at his nuts. If he did, Shad had another second to work on things. If not, Hart would just fire his rifle into Shad’s head and that would be the end of it.

  Adept and effective, but only a man like any other, Hart Wegg tightened up, did a little hop, and twisted aside to save his dick. Shad let go of the shotgun but not Howell’s throat, reached out and put his free hand on Hart’s chest and shoved. Off-balance like that, Hart Wegg teetered on the rim of the embankment for an instant before he went over backwards and rolled down through the cedar and brush until he was out of sight.

  Strangling a man was goddamn tough, but using your thumbs to press in on the Adam’s apple made it a lot easier. None of that trying to choke a guy where the muscles and tendons were rigid and well developed. Shad got in close, leaned his hip forward tying up Howell so he couldn’t move or drop. Howell brought the shotgun around once more, trying to slam the barrel of it hard against Shad’s arms and break his grip, but Shad wouldn’t let go.

  Jesus, he thought, this is it, I’m actually going to kill a man now.

  “Win what?” Shad asked, because his thoughts were all over the fucking place.

  Howell’s terrified eyes spurted tears that ran into his patchy beard. Hart would be along any second. Shad didn’t have much time, he had to get the shotgun. He let loose with a shout and exerted himself even more, wondering what price would be on him now for doing this thing with his own hands.

  He felt the cartilage beginning to slip beneath the pressure. Howell felt it too and his eyes lit with an anguished, living panic as he realized he was seconds away from having his windpipe crushed. He tried to slip the shotgun barrel closer to Shad’s face, on a poor angle, hoping to get a shot off. Shad pushed harder and Howell Wegg’s throat collapsed.

  Hart must’ve had a pretty good view of it all because he let out a shriek from below. He couldn’t fire the rifle because Shad had Howell’s slumping body propped up in front of him. A final wheezing rustle passed into the November air and Shad took the shotgun from Howell’s dying hand, turned, and ran.

  HART WEGG WOULDN’T COME UP THE SAME EMBANKMENT. He’d circle tight, probably around the Catawba and slip through the woods on Shad’s left, keep no more than twenty or thirty yards off. Maybe. It didn’t matter. You couldn’t fake your way through something like this. Shad didn’t have the know-how to set an ambush or build a roost and dig in to wait. He was back to running his ass off.

  Shit, extra shells. He should’ve checked Howell’s pockets. Why is it you’re so smart ten seconds too late for it to do you any good?

  Somber, writhing clouds covered the sky, and the sun cowered behind the hills. Crimson light spurted distantly and leaked off in an arcing swirl like a cut carotid.

  Rain started to come down again and he kept his stride as best as he could over the rough landscape. The pain slowed him some but he was working past it. He wasn’t graceful but holding the shotgun somehow helped. Carrying it gave him a subtle reassurance, the heft and weight of it connecting him to the world.

  Shad continued stumbling through the woods, branches clawing at his forehead and adding to his gashes. He wouldn’t go easy, and that resistance might help keep him from going at all.

  Just as Dave Fox had predicted, Shad had done little besides cause himself a lot of pain.

  Soon the hitch in his side got worse and the rage deserted him, leaving only a void in the center of his chest. He bounced into jagged, rotting maple tree trunks, snarled bramble vines, red chokeberry, and wild indigo. He didn’t know how many miles he’d covered or where he might be, or whether he’d done anything besides go in one absurd loop back to where he’d started.

  Whenever he came to a bank of rock that he couldn’t see over, he had to pause and check, for fear of going right over Jonah Ridge. At least then he’d die closer to home.

  And as he came around through another grove of catclaw and sticker bushes the land broke wide in a series of hillocks, with the thick and menacing stands of virgin pine leading into a bleak forest of darkness that spread for miles. He slowed, stopped, and slid to his knees.

  As he threw his head back gasping for air he saw Hart Wegg standing high above on a craggy bluff about a quarter mile off, sighting on him.

  Shad had played it all wrong. He could see it very clearly now.

  Right after killing Howell, Shad should’ve just sat down and tried to hide behind a bush. He would’ve been much better off. Now he had a shotgun that was worthless beyond twenty-five feet and Hart Wegg, the slick hunter, had a rifle good up to a thousand yards.

  He wouldn’t need that much. The childishly chaotic curls of his thick hair flipped back and forth in the wind. He appeared only slightly less docile than before.

  Shad knew it was already too late.

  He ran for the pine, hurled himself over the rim of the slope, and saw how it eased away beneath him for dozens of feet before disappearing into shadows.

  The bullet took him low in the back. He glided through the saturated air as thin wisps of mist rose from the dense, black floor of the woods and burst against his face. He watched the spray of his own blood precede him on the breeze, as he sailed for a vague and burdened eternity that ended much too soon yet not at all.

  Chapter Sixteen

  YOU DIDN’T MEET DEATH ALONE AND ALL AT once. You met your death a li
ttle at a time over the course of years, through the loss of your family and friends, the dead pets. The death of all the Laments.

  You’ve been here many times before, you just didn’t know it then because you hadn’t gone quite far enough.

  Not like this.

  You hold your breath for two minutes and you’re swimming and having fun. You hold it for four and you’re drowning and about to be a corpse. You can’t hold it for six. If you’ve been turning blue that long, then take a good look around, see the saints and the martyrs and all the other turquoise-colored spooks milling about, the short-diapered fat guys with tiny wings playing the harp behind you.

  Shad staggered on. He’d lost the shotgun and felt a touch lonely without it. He was in shock and knew it in a remote, uncaring way. If Mags were coming she’d be here soon—first one hand, then the other, then finally she’d be whole again and standing there with her arms out to him.

  He tried to hold on to himself but kept wafting off, passing out on his feet and waking up a moment later. Sometimes he found that he was crawling or propped against a tree with his blood slathered against the bark. This wasn’t good.

  “Oh Mama,” he said, because that’s the sort of thing you say when you’re dying and you know it. You always want your mama before the end, even if you’ve never met her.

  From his waist down he was completely drenched in blood. The rain didn’t wash any of it off the way it would’ve if this had been a sixteenth-century morality play. If he was getting close to God and cleansing his worldly sins from his soul. He’d be on his deathbed but redeemed, and ultimately filled with insight.

  Since Shad was still tremendously stupid, he hoped he had a while left to go yet.

  The bullet had entered above his left buttock and gone right through. The exit wound was the size of a child’s fist, punched out the right side of his belly, slightly over his hip. He tried to remember what organs were there. He thought that most of the major shit was on the left. He couldn’t remember.