The Borrowed World Series | Book 8 | Blood & Banjos

by Horton, Franklin

  “What do we do with all his stuff?”

  “If it wasn’t for the fire risk, I’d burn it all to the ground,” Jim said. “If there are more of these folks out there, they don’t deserve Andrew’s stuff.”

  “We could go through it? See if there’s anything we could use?”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea. We need to get out of here. We need to put some miles between us and the lake.”

  “What do I need to do?”

  “I’m going to keep watch. You saddle your horse and get your gear together. We’ll go to my camp, tear it down, then haul ass out of here.”

  “I don’t want to leave him,” Lloyd said. “He deserves better than being left here with the men who killed him.”

  “You’re wanting to bury him?”

  “Can we?”

  Jim considered. “You pack your shit. When you’re done, we’ll roll Andrew up in something and lay him across your saddle. You can’t ride on this trail anyway. We’ll find a place away from the lake and bury him.”

  “Sounds right,” Lloyd said. First things first, he located his banjo, leaning against the side of Andrew’s RV. He placed it in the case and carried it toward his nervous horse.

  26

  Laurel Bed Lake

  Clinch Mountain Wildlife Management Area

  It took Jim less than five minutes to saddle his horses and get them loaded. The nightvision gear like he had was in limited supply. Half of what his people had were battlefield pickups from skirmishes with better-equipped folks. The other half came from their contact with Scott and his Energy Recovery people. There weren’t enough sets for Jim to bring two with him. He didn’t want to leave the folks back at home short-handed if they ran into trouble.

  As a result, he led the way wearing his nightvision, his rifle hanging across the front of his body. Lloyd wore a headlamp with a red LED. They followed the same trail Jim had followed earlier to the campsite on the backside of the lake. Jim pointed out the side trail that led to the beach, but the two of them continued along the main trail.

  The headwaters of the lake was a series of small streams coursing through hundreds of acres of marshland and bogs. The mosquitoes were relentless here and tortured them like minions sent from Hell. Both men pulled on long-sleeved shirts and wrapped bandanas around their necks, trying to limit the amount of vulnerable flesh available for insect dining. Jim had a pair of gloves in his chest rig and soon pulled those on to protect the backs of his hands. He could already feel them swelling from the bites. Lloyd didn’t have any gloves, but eventually pulled a pair of spare socks over his hands when the bites became maddening.

  The headwaters were secluded from the main body of the lake. Things were quieter and more insular here without every stray sound amplified by the surface of the water. Undisturbed by the distant shooting, the wildlife continued its nocturnal activity. Somewhere a heron cried in distress, likely fighting off a raccoon trying to invade its nest. Coyotes yipped in the excitement and frenzy of the hunt. Somewhere, the calm hooting of an owl seemed the lone voice of reason in the night, unperturbed and omniscient.

  When they’d gone a mile or so beyond the lake, the marsh began to transition to thick rhododendron and hardwood forest.

  “We should bury him here,” Jim said. “This is pretty isolated and the ground is soft. Once we get back into these woods we’ll never get a hole dug. Too many roots and rocks.”

  “Gimme a shovel,” was Lloyd’s only response.

  Jim switched from his nightvision to his headlamp and located the entrenching shovel, or E-tool, in his gear. He tossed it to Lloyd. Unfolding the device, Lloyd grasped the magnitude of digging a man-sized hole with the miniature implement. While he got started, Jim tied the horses off where they could drink from the stream and nibble at the tall grass. He left the gear on them in case he’d been wrong about how isolated the area was.

  He built a fire while Lloyd dug. When the blaze cast enough light to work by, both switched off their headlamps and worked by firelight to preserve their batteries. Green limbs tossed into the blaze produced enough smoke to thin the hordes of mosquitoes. In a few minutes they switched off, Lloyd taking a breather while Jim took a turn behind the shovel.

  “Digging here in the firelight makes me feel like I’m burying treasure,” Jim said.

  “Guess you might say that,” Lloyd said. “He was a nice old man.”

  This reminder of what they were doing was sobering. Over the ride through the woods, some of their adrenaline-fueled anxiety dissipated. The deep forest had that kind of relaxing effect, at least until you had to stop and bury a body. Then relaxation fled with the abruptness of a tonearm being swept across a record on a record player.

  “Shit like this is the reason I’m the way I am,” Jim said. “You haven’t seen as much of it. You remember when my friends and I stopped at your apartment when we were coming home from Richmond? That old man shot those English boys and then his own son. You were shocked by that but we weren’t. We’d seen that kind of ugliness, that kind of senseless and incomprehensible violence, ever since our first day on the road.”

  “Seems like I only see it when I’m around you,” Lloyd said. It wasn’t intended as an accusation. More of an observation.

  Jim wasn’t certain of how to take the remark. “I don’t invite it, I only react to it. I do everything I can to make sure it’s not me or someone I care about that’s left bleeding out in the end. What do you think would have happened if I hadn’t killed those men back there?”

  “They’d have killed me,” Lloyd said. “When that guy kicked me, I couldn’t help but move. He was getting ready to shoot me when you killed him.”

  “Exactly, and none of that was my doing. I was at my campsite minding my own business. I was just trying to save your ass.”

  “And I appreciate it,” Lloyd said. “I know I give you shit about your body count but I’m only teasing. I know it’s not always your fault.”

  “It’s a bit of a sensitive topic. You don’t get that sometimes. There’s a lot of blood on my hands and it’s not always easy to live with. Back at that boat landing, I shot a man who was running away from me. I shot him in the fucking back to protect us. I don’t feel good about that, but I’d feel worse about him showing up later with help.”

  “I’m sorry,” Lloyd said. “I’m usually just trying to be funny. To keep things light-hearted. The way you pick on my drinking.”

  Jim had no response to that. He dug for a while longer, then climbed out, tossing the tool to Lloyd. Lloyd stood up, stretched his stiff back, and went to it. After a while, he stopped and wiped the sweat from his forehead.

  “You know, this makes me see why Randi is so hard. It doesn’t pay to let your guard down. It’s not worth making new friends. You love the people you already love because you don’t have any choice, but it’s not worth letting anyone new inside. The odds of losing them are too high.”

  Jim scrounged up a few more lengths of deadfall and tossed them onto the fire. Sparks rose in the heat, fading out against the night sky. “I’m with you, buddy. People have to earn their way into your heart by surviving past a certain point. Like a probationary period at a new job. You can be my friend, but you have to survive six months of knowing me first.”

  “Surviving six months as your friend can be kind of a challenge,” Lloyd acknowledged.

  Jim agreed. “Some don’t make it.”

  They let the truth of that hang in the air and didn’t speak for some time. They stopped digging at around two feet, neither having the energy for a regulation-depth grave. They laid Andrew’s body out, wrapped in a blanket they’d found in his RV. They raked the dirt back into the grave, Jim using a shovel and Lloyd using a forked branch.

  When they were done, Lloyd took off his battered felt hat and held it across his chest in a serious manner. The firelight reflected off his sweaty, dirt-smudged face. “Andrew, it was a pleasure to meet you. Sorry you met such an unfortunate end. You wer
e a good man, with fine taste in music and stories. I hope we get a share a fire again one day and pick up where we left off. I’ll bring the liquor.” When he finished, he looked at Jim expectantly.

  “What?”

  “You don’t have anything to add?” Lloyd asked.

  “Hell, I barely knew him,” Jim complained. He yanked off his sweaty ballcap and held it over his heart, then cleared his throat. “Andrew, you’ll be pleased to know that I killed the sorry sons-of-bitches that did this to you. May they rot in Hell. Amen.” He swung his clammy cap back onto his head. Jim looked back at his buddy with satisfaction. “Happy now?”

  Lloyd looked appalled. “You don’t go to many memorial services, do you?”

  Jim shook his head. “No. Can you tell?”

  Lloyd raised one eyebrow. “Maybe a little.”

  They piled rocks atop the grave to discourage all but the most determined scavengers. The coons, coyotes, and birds would give up, but these impediments would hardly slow a hungry bear.

  “Can we camp here?” Lloyd asked.

  Jim checked his watch. It was after 3 AM. “Let’s douse this fire and get further up the valley. If anyone is looking for us, the smell of this smoke might draw them in.”

  They used the shovel to pitch dirt onto the fire and it was soon extinguished. The weary men mounted their equally-weary horses and set off again. They were too tired to swat at bugs now. Too tired to think. Too tired to feel.

  27

  The Farm Road

  While Freda topped off Sharon’s scrapes with a bright orange tincture of mercurochrome, Kendall went to one of his sheds, digging out a come-along and a newly-sharpened ax. The hand-cranked winch would be plenty powerful enough to pull the branch from the roadway once he cut it loose from the tree.

  “You all still living up there at the camp?” Freda asked.

  “We are,” Sharon answered.

  “I imagine that’s tough. That place wasn’t set up as a home.”

  “Oliver wanted us to move into the house with him, but I didn’t want to be a bother.”

  “Wouldn’t have been a bother to him,” Freda assured her. “Everyone who ever came to that camp was family to him. He’d have taken any of them in.”

  “We’ll probably move in there now. I’ve been thinking about it ever since I found him.”

  Freda tightened her lips. “That’s a good idea, but that’s a big move for someone with nobody but children to help them. Do you even have a way of hauling things back and forth?”

  “Not really. I hadn’t got that far in my thinking yet.”

  “Well you strike me as a bit stubborn, but I hope you’ll accept help from your neighbors if it’s offered.”

  Sharon had to smile. She was always amused by the way older ladies felt obliged to speak their mind. She didn’t have much room to talk though. She was getting there herself. “I will gladly accept help.”

  “That’s more like it,” Freda said. “You can be independent without being so stubborn that you make life harder for yourself.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Sharon said. “I’ve always insisted on being too stubborn.”

  Freda put a hand on Sharon’s chair and used it to push herself to a standing position. Her knees popped and cracked. She screwed the cap back onto her fiery bottle of mercurochrome and set it aside. “I’ll help you down the steps and we’ll see about getting you hooked back up. I imagine you’re a bit anxious to get back to those kids.”

  “I am.”

  Freda awkwardly helped Sharon down the two steps to the yard.

  “I can get it from here,” Sharon said, rolling toward Honey. When she reached her pony, she clipped into the harness and untied from the tree. She flicked the reins and clucked her tongue, and Honey began ambling back toward the road.

  Freda walked alongside her, talking about her home and family. They talked about the neighbors and the community in general. Sharon just listened and in no time they were at the downed limb where she had spilled down the embankment.

  “I got it cut loose,” Kendall said. “I’m fixing to crank it out of the way now.” He’d used a short length of chain to attach his come-along to a stout tree, then fastened the braided steel cable of the winch around the far end of the dropped limb.

  While the powerful winch easily moved the heavy oak limb, it took a lot of arm power to make it happen. When Kendall paused to wipe his brow and shake some fresh blood back into his arm muscles, Sharon insisted on taking a turn.

  “No offense but it takes a little strength,” Kendall said.

  Sharon raised an eyebrow at him. “And rolling this chair every day doesn’t?”

  Kendall conceded the point and stepped out of the way. Sharon disconnected from her pony and rolled into position. She began steadily shoving the winch lever, bringing a small bite of cable onto the spool with each movement.

  Working up a sweat of her own now, Sharon glanced at Kendall. He gave her a nod of approval. She was glad to see that he was acknowledging her abilities and not dismissing them. That attitude would go a long way toward keeping them on good terms as neighbors. She’d have a hard time trusting anyone who didn’t respect what she was capable of.

  “That enough?” she asked, once she’d opened enough of a gap for her horse and chair.

  “Let’s go a hair wider,” Kendall said. “In case we need to bring something bigger than your chair through here.”

  Sharon moved back and let Kendall take over the winch again. When he was done, the branch had been moved entirely clear of the road and lay in the ditch.

  “I’ll nibble away at that for firewood,” Kendall said. “We’ll clear it out of there eventually.”

  “I appreciate the help. I wasn’t sure how I was going to get back around it.”

  “A body shouldn’t be too proud to take help when you need it,” Freda said in her customarily blunt manner.

  “I’ll remember that.”

  Kendall took a seat in the shady fence-line by his winch. He mopped at his brow with a grimy handkerchief. “If you don’t mind me asking, how did you get around the camp before all this mess happened? Ain’t exactly smooth ground for a wheelchair up there.”

  “I had a golf cart. Oliver bought it for me. Once the gas ran out, I had to park it and start using the pony.”

  “I’ve got one around here somewhere too. Mine was electric. We used to have a camper over at the lake when the kids were young. We’d ride that golf cart between the lake and the camper and back. Eventually, the battery crapped out and I was too cheap to buy another one.”

  “Not to change the subject,” Freda said, “but we need to think about what we’re going to do with Oliver. You sure you want to bury him at the camp?”

  “I asked the children and that was their idea. I hate to let them make the decision then overrule them.”

  Freda ignored the comment, likely of the mind that you shouldn’t put such decisions in the hands of children to begin with. “Were you going back to the camp tonight or staying at Oliver’s house?”

  “I’m going to head back to the camp to speak to the children. I need to let them know that he died. He was still alive when they stopped by earlier. To occupy them, I’ll let them help plan his service. Maybe they can play some music. That’s something Oliver would have enjoyed.”

  Kendall smiled. “He sure would. Nothing warmed his heart like seeing those children pick up an instrument.”

  Freda was staring at the ground, rubbing her chin, brow furrowed in thought. Sharon could see that she was a planner. An organizer. She didn’t like loose ends, like a dead body with no plan for getting it in the ground. “How about you just stay up there at the camp with them young’uns tonight. Help them figure out their service and whatnot. Kendall and I will tend to the body. You have a watch?”

  “I do.”

  “Then we’ll be up there around 3 PM tomorrow. We’ll arrange to get the body up there to the camp and make sure that any folks who might want to come k
nows about it.”

  “You’d do all that?” Sharon asked.

  Freda looked at her in surprise. “I said I would, didn’t I?”

  “Well, yeah, but that’s a lot. I’m grateful, it’s just that we’ve spent an entire year doing nearly everything on our own. I guess I’m just not used to getting a lot of help.”

  “Weren’t our fault,” Kendall said. “Oliver was just as proud as you. Didn’t want to take any help. Any time we asked about the camp he said you all had it under control.”

  “I guess we did,” Sharon said, “but it wasn’t always easy.”

  Freda was nodding as if this was confirmation of the point she’d been trying to make. “Like I said, take help if you need it. Ain’t no sense in being so proud that you cut your nose off to spite your face.”

  “Guess not,” Sharon admitted. “Well, I’m very appreciative. I was pretty overwhelmed when I came upon you folks. Guess you could tell that.”

  “Like Freda said, folks needs help sometimes. Ain’t no shame in taking it.”

  Sharon smiled at Kendall’s delivery. It may have been exactly the same thing Freda was trying to say, but it was certainly delivered in a much gentler manner than the abrupt woman had delivered it. That didn’t mean Sharon disliked her. She appreciated people who were honest and direct. She was simply more accustomed to being on the delivery end than the receiving end.

  “Thank you folks so much. You’ll find Oliver in his bed. The house is open. I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Freda surprised Sharon by wrapping her in a warm embrace. “Don’t you worry about a thing.”

  When Freda backed away, Kendall gave a friendly wave and Sharon headed off. She let Honey pull at her own pace, aware of the rough road beneath her wheels. She realized she was going to be sore tomorrow. That was okay. Sharon was never one to complain about soreness. It meant you were working toward something. It meant you were feeling.

  It meant you were alive.