A Tree Born Crooked (20 page)

James looked up into the sky and, for a moment, let himself be taken.
 

“I’m alright now, James. I think I’m good. No, wait.”

Behind him, James could hear Rabbit retching onto the dust and dried grass next to the Jeep. James kept his head tilted upwards, but the moment had passed; he no longer saw the sky.
 

They had been about an hour outside of Mobile when Rabbit said he was going to be sick. James hadn’t hesitated to pull over onto the first side road they came to. It was actually more of a four-wheeler track cutting across the fallow land. It had once probably been a timber farm, but was now an abandoned waste of sandy dirt and scattered, broken pine trees left behind to rot.
 

It had been a miserable drive. Marlena hadn’t said a word since the gas station. She had sat in the back seat, pressed up against one door, her arms crossed, and her gaze never wavering from the window. James could feel the fury radiating from her. It was almost as if she were afraid that if she moved, she wouldn’t be able to contain her emotions any longer. She sat rigid, immobile, her mind racing, but her body controlled and stiff. Meanwhile, Rabbit sweated and griped from the front seat next to James. He would be silent for ten miles, then start complaining about the lack of radio stations, the suspension of the Jeep or the temperature inside it. One minute it was too hot, and he was twisting the air conditioner dial to full blast, and the next he was freezing, cursing at the vents and pointing them in different directions. James suggested rolling down the windows, but as soon as Rabbit did, the wind was in his face or he could smell a distant paper factory, or road kill, and the window had to go back up. Then it was back to punching the air conditioner button on and off again. James tried to remind himself that Rabbit was coping with toxic chemicals draining out of his system, but it was hard to have sympathy for him. James kept glancing back in the rearview mirror, but Marlena appeared oblivious to Rabbit’s antics.
 

Eventually, Rabbit had settled down, but grew paler by the mile. His skin had a waxy sheen to it, and James was ready for it when Rabbit told him to pull over. As soon as they were off the highway, Rabbit had tumbled out of the Jeep and begun ten minutes of dry heaving and spitting up stomach bile. James had left him alone, staying clear on the other side of the vehicle. Marlena had gone for a walk, or at least that’s what James assumed. She had quietly left the Jeep, kicking her way down the sandy track with her arms still crossed tightly in front of her.
 

James didn’t know what to do. He kept trying to put the pieces together in his head, but he didn’t know these people. He was unsure of what anyone was capable of and what they really wanted in the first place. What did Waylon want? Was he really taking the money and running? What about Rabbit? What had he been planning to do with all that money in the first place? And Marlena? For that matter, what did he want himself? There were so many unanswered questions spinning around inside his head. James closed his eyes. In truth, what he really wanted at that moment was a cold beer with the condensation running down the side of the bottle, and to sit in a dusky bar with the blinds blocking the sunlight out and a baseball game on a television he could hear, but not see, his only concern being to mark the time with each drink. That was what he wanted.
 

Unfortunately, he didn’t foresee that happening anytime in the near future. Rabbit came up next to him, wiping a string of spit from the side of his face.
 

“I think I’m good now.”

“How you feeling?”

“Like I got run over by a semi. But I’ll spare you the details.”

“You really into that stuff this bad?”

Rabbit ducked inside the front of his T-shirt and dried the sweat from his face.
 

“I don’t know. I don’t know why I even started in the first place. It was just there, so I, you know. Didn’t think not having it would ever be a problem with Delmore ‘round. He was always able to scrounge up something. He had all these secret hiding places in the trailer. Like in the hole behind the light switch cover in the bathroom or stuffed into one of the coils behind the fridge. I always told him that one was a bad idea. Like to catch on fire, I always reckoned.”

Rabbit’s brow furrowed.

“He probably don’t want me telling you none of that. He’s kinda paranoid, you know. I wouldn’t say nothing ‘bout it.”

James turned and looked down the track. It curved away around a stand of pine trees about a quarter of a mile down. He didn’t see Marlena anywhere.
 

“Rabbit? I need to tell you something.”

Rabbit bent over and spit into the dirt at his feet.

“Now what?”
 

“I just thought you should know there’s a possibility that Waylon set you up. And Delmore might have had a hand in it, too.”

Rabbit’s head jerked up.

“You mean that?”

“Marlena got a call at the gas station a ways back. I could only hear part of it, but it sounded like Waylon definitely don’t want us to find him. I don’t think he just took that money from you and Delmore, like maybe you thought. I think he took it and set you up to take the fall for it. Maybe Delmore helped him and they were gonna split it or something. You gotta admit, Delmore pointed you out awful fast.”

James watched Rabbit’s face. It fell by degrees as what James was telling him began to sink in.

“But, why? I mean, what I ever done to him? I didn’t never do nothing to him.”

“I know. But it’s the way this game is played by some people. You wanted to be part of it. That’s how it goes. Selfishness and greed win out over people most of the time.”

Rabbit stared back at the ground, his face slick again with sweat.
 

“I thought he was my friend.”

“Maybe he was. That don’t mean you could trust him when money got into the picture.”

Rabbit kept his eyes on the ground.

“Can I trust you?”

“I’m not looking to get rich, if that’s what you’re asking. That cash ain’t worth what it’s worth.”

“No, I mean really trust you? You gonna help me outta this?”

“I am. And you’re gonna get outta this. I wouldn’t be wasting my damn time otherwise.”

James tried to grin, but Rabbit didn’t seem to notice. He nodded toward the curve in the track.
 

“What ‘bout her?”

James raised his eyebrows.

“What’d you mean?”

“Well, whose side you think she’s really on?”

James felt the spark flare up inside him, but he tried to put it out. He couldn’t blame Rabbit for asking.
 

“She’s on our side.”

“Why? ‘Cause you bang her and now all of a sudden she’ll follow you anywhere?”

James clenched his fists, but kept them firmly at his sides, reminding himself of where Rabbit was coming from.

“It ain’t like that.”

“Bullshit. Don’t tell me there’s not nothing going on between you two. I think maybe you ain’t seeing things straight ‘cause you got some kinda feeling for her.”

James sighed.

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Well, there you go! Don’t you go telling me that she’s just gonna up and turn on her daddy. How’d you know she’s not part a his whole plan? How’d you know she’s not just going along with us, messing with your head, or whatever you want to call it, so as to go and get me killed, huh? Answer that for me.”

James took a deep breath.
 

“Because if that was the case, I think you’d be dead by now.”

“What?”

James turned toward his brother and looked him in the eyes.

“I think you’d be dead by now. You heard me. Think about it.”

Rabbit still wasn’t buying it.
 

“I don’t know. People don’t just turn on their kin like that.”

“Yes, they do. Now, I ain’t asking you to trust her. But I’m telling you, you want to make it out of this alive? You gotta start putting two and two together and figuring out people’s motives. That’s about the only way this works. Now, she ain’t got no cause to hurt you. I heard ‘em talking. It sounded like he threw her to the dust with the rest of us.”

Rabbit considered this for a moment. James could tell that he still didn’t like it, but saw the logic in it.
 

“So then, what’s the plan?”

James squinted up at a hawk circling lazily over them. It was flying low, almost as if it were trying to take part in their conversation. James wished it had some words of advice.
 

“I’m still not sure.”

“Well, I think it’s time you started asking me what I think for a change.”

“You got some bright idea all of a sudden?”

Rabbit ignored the sarcasm in James’ voice.
 

“Maybe I do. You said them guys ain’t out to kill me, right? They’re following us to get to Waylon, so they can get the money back.”

“If Waylon even has the money. He wouldn’t tell Marlena one way or the other.”

Rabbit groaned in frustration.

“Whatever. We’re still going with the idea that he’s got the money, right?”

“I guess.”

“Then we just keep going on like we’re still on the way to find Waylon. I mean, as far as we think it necessary for them to know where he is.”

“And then?”

Rabbit threw his hands up in the air.

“Then we hightail it outta there! Go on home! Those gator folks might just leave us alone. They won’t have no more cause to come after us. Shit, they’ll probably think I didn’t have nothing to do with the whole mess in the first place. We just ride on home and don’t look back.”

Lines appeared on James’ forehead as he tried to think it through.

“What about Waylon?”

“What about him? He’s the one took the money after all, ain’t he? He didn’t care if I got killed, right? Well, now he can get himself killed. It won’t be none of our business.”

“We still don’t know for sure if he’s got the money. If something happens to him, you gonna be able to sleep at night knowing you had a hand in it?”

“I don’t see no other way, do you?”

James didn’t. His brother was right; it did seem like the only option to get them home. Rabbit was finally thinking the way he should have been all along. But James wasn’t certain they could really go through with it.
 

“What ‘bout Marlena? You think she’s gonna be fine with us leading them to Waylon and then bailing? Knowing what they’re gonna do to him when they find him?”

Rabbit shrugged.

“You said we could trust her. I guess this ‘bout figures that one out, huh?”

James didn’t know what to say. He had spoken for her, but this was asking her to do something that he wasn’t sure he could do himself if the tables had been turned. Yet, what choice did they have? Marlena would either see that or she wouldn’t. Either way, the amount of guilt that it was going to shackle her with would be colossal. James checked the time on his cell phone. They had already been off the road for over twenty minutes and they had to get going. James fixed Rabbit with a hard look.
 

“Wait here.”

James headed down the track to find Marlena and burden her with the choice of her own betrayal.
 

~ ~ ~

When James came around the copse of skeletal pine trees, sagging with the weight of dead, brittle needles, he didn’t find Marlena, kicking angrily at rocks as he had imagined, but instead, a house. It was an old, two-room dogtrot house of the kind that hadn’t been built in Florida for a century or more. Two rooms formed the base and top of the “I” shaped design, while a narrow, covered porch bridged between them. It was set off from the track about a hundred yards, backing into the trees and surrounded by weeds and knee-high brambles. The place looked like it had been deserted for at least fifty years. The corrugated tin roof and one wall of a room had caved in completely, creating a sharp slant heavy with pine branches, broken bird nests, and rust.
 

James approached the house, snagging his jeans on the grasping briars and stumbling over the rough ground. He froze when he saw the long grass rustle beside his boot, but it was only a black snake, looking for a quieter place to sun itself. James watched it slide, slow and easy, and disappear through the middle of a cinderblock in what must have once been a front yard. James made a point to lift his feet higher as he walked.
 

“Marlena?”

He regretted it as soon as he opened his mouth. It somehow seemed wrong to shout in this place. He instinctively knew that she wouldn’t answer him, although he was sure that she was there. She wasn’t hiding from him, but he would have to come to her. He stepped through the covered walkway to the back of the house. The main room boasted a tottering brick chimney, still mostly intact, but two of the back walls had crumbled completely. Pieces of them, a doorframe, a board with a rusted nail still trapping a scrap of calendar, and a splintered windowsill littered the ground. The ceiling to the room was missing altogether, and sunshine rained down onto the weeds and detritus, a homesteader’s dreams of refuge now exposed to the unrelenting elements of nature and loneliness. Marlena, surrounded by the wreckage of forgotten reveries and nightmares, crowned by a halo of late afternoon sunlight, remained still as James approached. There was an ethereal, haunting grace in the way she slowly raised her eyes to his and, suddenly, he remembered the deer.