A Portion for Foxes

by Daniel Mitchell

  My heartbeat slowly returned to normal, and I started laughing in relief at my escape. When I looked at Randy, he wasn’t laughing at all. His eyes were locked on the far side of the bridge. Someone was standing there, looking back at us, dimly lit by moonlight and an occasional flash of sparks from the train wheels against the track. I couldn’t see him clearly enough to know who it was, friend or foe, but I wasn’t feeling lucky.

  The tracks where we stood were laid high on a steep pile of loose gravel. The wind of the passing train was nearly enough to push us down the side to roll all the way to the thorns below. We couldn’t go anywhere until the train was gone, and neither could the man on the far side. Once we could move, so could he. We would have a few minutes’ head start at best.

  We had to wait for what seemed hours before the final cars passed. As soon as the last one cleared us, I started down the tracks at a limping run. After a quarter mile, I was dizzy. The stitch in my side was competing with my bruised ribs for which hurt the worst. With the train gone, the steep hills to our right and a tall stand of trees crowding the tracks on the left blocked most of the moonlight. We couldn’t tell how close our pursuer was. With every step, I imagined bloody hands reaching for me, but maybe it would be a bullet instead or a knife.

  I could clearly hear Randy behind me, sobbing between breaths. How neither of us managed to trip and break our necks on the uneven crossties, I couldn’t say. I spotted a familiar dead tree and dropped over the side of the tracks, sliding down the gravel embankment half on my feet, half on my hip. I knew a trail nearby, a shortcut to Joseph’s cabin. If we could find it and get out of sight before whoever was behind us caught up, we would have a chance. Magically, I managed to stumble through the right patch of briars onto the trail, but the deep blackness under the trees forced me to slow down, feeling my way more than seeing it.

  The last time I’d been on the trail, I was following Joseph on his spare four-wheeler, and we’d been coming down the hill. Trudging up the rocky incline on foot was murder. I caught a glimpse of the farm light high above on the side of Joseph’s shop, right at the edge of the cliff.

  My relief was quickly replaced by confusion. We’d missed a turn somewhere in the trees. The light was too close and at least a hundred feet above us. The trail leveled out then started to drop back down. We were heading toward the creek that dumped into the river under his cabin. I knew of a steep trail up to the cabin from there, but I’d never used it. I wasn’t even sure I could find it in the dark. It was the trail Joseph used to carry frozen chickens down to feed Old Nick. I didn’t know exactly where the gator hung out but was uncomfortably sure we’d have to wade across the creek in the dark to get up the cliff.

  I had no way of knowing how far we were past the turn I’d missed. Every step that direction could mean a bullet or a knife in the dark. Keeping on held the possibility of being eaten alive.

  Beginning to get the idea you don't like me, God, I thought. Maybe no one was on the trail behind us. Old Nick might’ve been busy someplace far upriver. Right. And gold might fall out of my butt if we sit here long enough because my luck has been just swell so far.

  A branch cracked somewhere in the night, and the decision was made for me. It might have been nothing but the wind, but it also might have been someone looking for a throat to slit. I turned and ran past Randy toward the creek.

  The trees were thinner there, where the ground was mostly rock. The moon lit up more of the trail, and we managed a shambling run down the slope. In less than a minute, I could hear the creek gurgling and splashing down a steep gully in the rock wall to our right. Twenty yards to the left, it widened into a deep pool as it passed under a short section of railroad bridge.

  I skidded down the bank and stepped into the water slowly, careful not to make any more noise than necessary, Randy close on my heels. The water was up to my thighs before we were halfway across. In the center of the stream a patch of moonlight glowed. Just as we stepped into it, a gun boomed behind us, and I yelped, my ears ringing.

  “That’ll do right there, boys. Not another step.” It was Richard—no mistaking that raspy growl. “Step away, Randall. Would sure break my heart to shoot my rat brother by accident.”

  Randy just gave me a shrug before moving to the side and back toward Richard.

  “Where’s everybody else?” I asked.

  “Dead or running. Your friend the caretaker went over the edge by that creepy grave. If he lived, he ain’t feeling so hot. Then that fat injun came out of nowhere and got Jesse. Imagine that. My brother the outlaw, killed by an injun. Kind of fitting somehow.”

  I backed slowly toward the far side of the stream, still clutching the Mini-14. I didn’t dare raise it. Richard was holding the Desert Eagle he’d given Jesse earlier. He pointed it casually away from me, as if he was hoping I’d try something.

  With every step I took backward, he took one down the slight rise. To my side, thick boulders were piled loosely, evidence of frequent rock falls from the cliff above.

  The knowledge that a bullet was coming any second gave me a reckless sort of bravery. I was terrified and looking for any out, my eyes flicking back and forth, but I got mad too, madder than I’d ever been. I couldn't believe Joseph had fallen off the cliff. If he went over the edge, he meant to. He was still out there somewhere, but I needed time.

  “Do you really think you're going to win this easy?" I asked. "What a dumbass!”

  The big gun in his hand boomed, and rock chips flew off the boulder to my left. The three-foot flame that came out of the barrel blinded me instantly, but that was the only chance I was likely to get. I jumped for the cover of the rock.

  As soon as I got it between us, I let loose back across the stream with the Mini-14. I just pointed the barrel past the rock and pulled the trigger eight or ten times. I didn't even pretend to aim. The strobing muzzle flashes of my rifle showed I was firing at an empty creek bank. I strained my eyes, even more night blind than before and mostly deaf too.

  I knew I'd never find the trail, so I just ran into the brush and kept going. The cliff would soon force me back toward the open stretch of train track as the canyon narrowed ahead. I’d be clearly outlined in the moonlight, but running was all I could think to do. My ankle and ribs still hurt, but they were the least of my worries.

  Limbs and briars raked my face and legs. I held the rifle in front of me with both hands and tried to fend off the worst of them. It didn’t help much. A few minutes later, the trees thinned out, and I ran into the open, almost level with the steel rails. I could see the beginning of the quarry in the distance, with only bare cliff and dead rock ahead. I couldn’t hope to run that far before Richard caught up and used me for target practice in the moonlight. My only option was six quick steps up the rise and over the far side to the river.

  The tracks were high above the Washita there. I slid and scrambled thirty feet down a steep ledge of pale stone toward dark water. Just as I reached the small stretch of sand at its edge, the night was again shattered by the boom of Richard’s Israeli pistol. I spun around and pulled my trigger as quickly as I could. On the fifth squeeze, the gun made only a quiet click. Frantically, I racked the slide and pulled the trigger again and again but got no response. I reached for the spare mag in the cargo pocket of my camouflage pants and found nothing. I’d lost it somewhere in the flight from the cave and never noticed.

  I knew better than to shoot like that. I’d missed Richard completely.

  "Richard, why don't we just get out of here? Enough already," Randy said from behind him.

  "Shut up, bitch, before I decide to end you too."

  "But Richard," Randy said, "this is crazy. He's just a—"

  The dull thwop as Richard whipped his pistol across Randy’s forehead cut off whatever argument he was about to make, and Randy dropped into the gravel with a whimper.

  "Never did listen for shit," Richard said. He pointed the pistol at me and pulled the trigger before I could duck. There was
no boom that time, just a quiet click. He dropped the gun on Randy and laughed.

  Turning back to me, he pulled the knife from his belt sheath and started down the ledge. “We ran out of ammo at the same time. Tell me that’s not destiny. Now you get to die the same way your friend did. Hell, this is even the same knife.” He smiled. “Think you’ll faint and shit yourself like he did?”

  I still had the bone-handled knife Joseph had given me that morning, but I knew I’d never beat Richard in a knife fight.

  "You know, I think I'll tie your Daddy up and let him watch me give it to your batshit momma before I gut them both. Then I might just go see that little girlie of yours, the one Randall's been fumbling at and no doubt failing to please."

  "Y-you shut your damn mouth. This ain't over yet," I said.

  Richard's smile just got wider.

  "I like the young ones," he said. "Sometimes, they're good for days. Might even give the dogs a turn. When I'm done, the wetbacks will still pay big bucks to pass around a juicy white girl, even if she's a little beat up. She'll die young someplace south of the border, your momma will dream of my sweet love in the nuthouse, and I got five bucks says your daddy will waste away in a bottle for years before I go back and end him hard."

  The way he smiled, I believed he meant every word of it. Everyone I loved—he would torture them all. Underestimating my father might be a mistake, but I would be long dead by then.

  So I did the only thing I could think of. I prayed.

  Dear Lord, if I've ever been worthy in your sight, help me kill this son of a bitch. I don't even care if I live, Lord. Just let him die first.

  It wasn’t the most righteous praying I'd ever done, but that was all I had in me. I took a step forward, spun in a circle on my right foot, and slung the rifle at him as hard as I could. Finally, something went right. The spinning rifle slammed into his left knee with a crack that echoed from the cliff, and his leg buckled. He threw up his hands to catch himself, the knife spun off into the darkness, and he dropped off the ledge toward the jumbled rocks below. He twisted wildly as he fell, trying to miss the rocks. He didn't. I heard a loud crack like a tree limb breaking.

  The fall wasn’t that far, but it must have been enough. His body was bent backward over the rock beneath him like a half-sprung hinge. One arm was twisted under him, the other thrown wide. The river lapped gently at his boots in the sand. I pulled out my knife and walked toward him.

  I stopped five feet away, too scared to get close. I felt around until I found a good-sized rock, raised it in my left hand, and stood looking at his crumpled, twitching form in the light of the rising moon. Well, it was twitching from the waist up. From the waist down was a telling lack of motion. He was completely at my mercy, but I just stood there. I wondered which was worse, a violent death or a cripple’s life, crapping into a bag as his light dimmed to inevitable darkness and flame.

  All the rules said to never move someone with a neck or back injury. I edged closer, scared he was faking, put my boot on his hip, and shoved. His legs shifted limply, leaving no doubt. He screamed, but I found no light in his helplessness, his suffering. He deserved all the torments of hell after a miserable death, but who was I to send him there? Was I really any better? I wasn't sure anymore. And maybe it didn't matter. I threw the rock at his head as hard as I could—and missed. I couldn’t even kill him right.

  I glanced up toward the rails of the train tracks, at the moon glinting from the cold steel. In the cinders alongside them, Randy lay unmoving, maybe dead, maybe not. A vision of that first day in Joseph's cabin came to mind, with the creepy verse above the mantel: “And they shall be a portion for foxes.”

  I leaned my weight onto Richard's hip, rocking harder, imagining I could feel the shattered vertebrae grinding and hear them clacking like dice in a cup. I gagged a little, tears dripping from my nose and chin.

  He was screaming again, but the world went curiously quiet except for the wind creaking through the indifferent oaks on the cliff and the river whispering behind me. I shoved harder, needing his agony to matter, needing to find joy in my triumph over the nearly mythical beast this crumpled bastard at my feet had become, but I found no forgiveness, no release, not the slightest breath of vindication—only guilt, crushing, overwhelming guilt. My mouth flooded with spit, and everything I'd eaten for a week came up, splattering his jeans and boots. My knees buckled, and I ended up in the sand, leaning over my own vomit. He was broken, but so was I.

  I knelt there for a long time before someone cleared his throat above me.

  I looked up to see Joseph standing by the tracks. Taye, filthy and bloodstained, knelt over Randy beside him.

  "He's still breathing," Taye said. "Got a hell of a goose egg, though."

  "Might want to get out of there, Sam." Joseph pointed into the darkness behind me. I turned to look and saw red eyes moving across the current ten feet from shore.

  I scrambled quickly over Richard and up the ledge. A rumbling hiss filled the night. I panicked and almost slid back down, but Joseph caught my collar and dragged me the rest of the way up.

  I turned just in time to see Old Nick, twelve feet of muscle and judgment, lunge out of the moonlit water and grab Richard's lifeless legs in his three-foot jaws before backing quickly into the water and beginning a slow roll. Bones cracked, and Richard screamed again, begging us, God, anyone to save him. Me and God, we just watched. Then he was gone.

  We stared into the night after them for several minutes, but the river rolled on with no more notice of us than ever. Taye finally looked down at Randy stirring weakly and pulled out his knife.

  “No!” I screamed and ran up the slope.

  They both looked at me like I’d gone mad, and maybe I had. When I stumbled to a stop above Randy, tears were flowing down my cheeks. Taye shrugged and handed me his knife. I grabbed it and waved it wildly at them both. They stepped back, a little wide-eyed.

  “He’s going to live!”

  “Sam, I don’t know what you’re planning, but he can send us all to prison. Besides, he’s one of them. He needs to die tonight.”

  “No, Joseph! No! He’s as much a victim as Mike and Talia. I don’t care what he’s done or what you have to say about it either, Taye! He helped us, and I gave him my word!” I continued slashing the air between us.

  “If you want to kill him, you have to kill me first. I won’t let one more damn person die over Richard and Jesse fucking Stangler!”

  “Sam,” Taye said as he raised his hands toward me and started to take a step forward, but so did I.

  I raised the knife, planted my feet, and waited. Taye’s eyes locked on mine, maybe searching for weakness, trying to see just how much I meant it. I bent my knees slightly, getting as ready as I could, and glared at him with every bit of rage I had left. He took a small step forward, and Joseph stepped between us.

  “Sam is right, Taye. We kill that boy, and we’re no better than his brothers, and we’ll surely join them in hell. Help me get him up. This is over.”

  Taye’s face turned ugly, and too fast to see in the dark, he snatched the knife out of my hand. I was sure he would kill us all, but he just slipped the knife into the sheath at his belt and took a deep, slow breath.

  “It’s a mistake, but I’ll give you this one, Joseph. Sam, understand something. His life is yours now. What he does with it, for good or evil, it’s on you. Never forget that.”

  I couldn’t talk anymore. I just nodded, and Taye walked off into the night.

  Chapter 12

  "Will you stay this time?" my mother said. "You belong here with your family."

  Do I? I wondered. I wasn't really sure I belonged anywhere, except maybe at Joseph's shop. Or a prison. I’d been spending most nights under the stars in a little clearing by the quarry, trying to remember who I used to be and to pretend everything had been a nightmare that would fade with enough time. But that wasn’t working.

  "You're my only son. I need you here."

  Th
e only son you have left, but not your first choice.

  Maybe that was unfair. A curious dullness filled her eyes and voice, a medicated monotone minus any real emotion to flesh out the words. With Will's death, something in my mother had gone away, maybe never to return. That high wall I’d been trying so hard to build around my heart began to crumble.

  "Can I have a sandwich? Maybe some chips?" I said, not looking at the thick red scars on her wrists.

  They were healing, but the marks where the stitches had been were still visible.

  A light came into her eyes as she clutched at that little bit of normalcy, a mother thing to do.

  "Of course," she said and hurried to the kitchen. I wondered if she was as eager as I was to change the subject.

  My father sat watching me from the recliner across the room. I was glad he couldn't see my eyes clearly as I looked back at him. I didn’t want him to see what lay behind them.

  He looked old—not just older but truly old. I'd never really thought of him as looking his age, but now he looked exhausted, used up, and well past his fifty-some-odd years. I was suddenly bothered that I couldn’t remember his exact age. If I had to guess right then, not knowing him at all, I would have said seventy-five, maybe eighty.

  He motioned toward the door, and I followed him out onto the porch, closing the door softly behind myself. We both leaned on the peeling oak rail. I looked past the corral to the distant hills of the Arbuckles rising faintly above the trees. My father looked only at me. I wondered what he saw.

  "Is it over?"

  "Yes. They're gone. They won't be coming back."

  "I'm sorry I wasn't there for you," he said. "Your mother..."

  The silence was heavy with a story I didn't want to hear. Her new scars said enough.