A Tree Born Crooked (27 page)

“What, you think I know?”

James glowered at him.

“Look, if I had that money, you think I’d be hiding out here in the middle of the damn woods like some kinda weirdo? I’d be halfway to Mexico by now.”

Rabbit quickly spoke up.

“What? You’d have just screwed me like that?”

James cut him off.

“Shut up, Rabbit.”

“But did you hear what he said?”

James kept his eyes on Delmore.

“Not important right now, Rabbit.”

Rabbit looked at Marlena, but she wasn’t paying him any attention either. He lowered his head and stepped away from everyone. James and Delmore continued to stare each other down.

“You’re striking out for answers. So how ‘bout we go back to the first one? If you don’t have the money, and you already blamed everything on Rabbit, what the hell are you doing out here?”

Delmore never got a chance to tell them. James heard heavy footsteps pounding on the narrow front porch, and suddenly there were six people in the room instead of four. By the time James and Marlena had their guns raised, they were staring at the barrels of a 9mm and a .375 Ruger. It was a silent standoff until the man crossing sights with James laughed gruffly.
 

“Well now, I guess we finally got our invite to this little party. It’s ‘bout time.”

The man Marlena had her gun trained on was one of the men who had been at her house with Big Ted. He was burly, with a slack neck and small, piggy eyes set too close together. He had his gun fixed on Marlena, just as she had hers on him, and neither one of them was wavering. The man who had spoken, however, was someone they hadn’t seen before. James tried to keep his voice steady.
 

“You must be the one in charge. Sully Granger?”

He was shorter and skinnier than James had imagined he would be. He wore all black, heavy dark denim and a long-sleeved dress shirt, as if he were trying to pose as some sort of anorexic Johnny Cash. His shiny NASCAR belt buckle was almost as big as his head, which was dwarfed by a giant, black felt cowboy hat with a silver and turquoise hatband. A collection of alligator teeth strung on a long piece of leather hung around the loose skin of his thin and stubbly neck. Underneath the man’s hat was a stringy piss-blond mullet that reached to his shoulders and matched the scraggly horseshoe mustache that hung on his thin, pale pink lips. Although his gun was pointed directly at James’ chest, the man’s emaciated frame appeared relaxed. His expression, however, conveyed only irritation.
 

“And I know vaguely who you are. I don’t care to know more. Listen here, boy, and ma’am.”

His eyes moved lazily to Marlena.

“I didn’t kill you before out of respect for Waylon. He and I did some good business over the years, God rest his soul.”

James heard a small gasp emanate from Marlena, but couldn’t turn to look at her. Sully continued.
 

“But we all make stupid mistakes.”

He glowered past James at Rabbit.
 

“Mine was thinking that this moon-brained brother of yours and his cousin wouldn’t have the balls to try and steal from me.”

James could sense Rabbit slowly inching away behind him. His movements were a distraction to James, but Sully obviously didn’t see them as a threat. James was trying to think of something to say, some way to reason with this crazy, gator teeth-wearing, backwoods crime boss that would allow them to walk out of the house alive, when Delmore stepped out between them all.

“Just a minute there, sir.”

Sully furrowed his thick, blond eyebrows and was even more annoyed now. James wished to God that Delmore would move. He was making the whole situation more complicated. He could hear Marlena breathing beside him and knew that her arm must be getting heavy from holding the gun up, just as his was.

Sully spit a glob of tobacco at Delmore’s feet.
 

“What the hell do you want?”

Delmore took another step toward Sully.

“I don’t know why you’re including me in this equation. I told Big Ted where you could find ‘em and the money in the first place.”

James felt the spark of anger inside of him erupt so wide and so deep that he wasn’t sure if he could keep his arm steady. If Marlena and Rabbit hadn’t been in the room with him, he knew that he would have already pulled the trigger. Sully frowned.
 

“Your point? Waylon didn’t have the money. Hence, I don’t have the money. Therefore, you didn’t do shit for me after all. That’s your little equation, if you want to call it that. ”

Delmore had raised his hands out in front of himself in protest when he stepped away from James’ side, but now he was slowly lowering them. In the dim twilight, James could see the small pistol handle sticking up out of Delmore’s back pocket, but he knew that it wasn’t going to do him any good now. Delmore continued to plead.

“But, I did everything you said to. I told you ‘bout this place, told you that Rabbit was just stupid enough to hide out in a place we both knew ‘bout. I sat here all damn day, being eaten alive by mosquitos waiting for ‘em. And I called you when they come, just like you said to. I mighta been wrong ‘bout Waylon, but I’ll work it off. I’ll do whatever you want. Name it.”

Sully Granger laughed and James saw the gleam in his eyes. It was over. Delmore couldn’t see it, but James could. He felt the weight of the gun breaking his wrist and the metal trigger warming against his finger. He listened to Marlena’s shallow breathing beside him. He tasted the burn of fear along his throat and knew. It all came down to this, and James just hoped that he could somehow keep them all alive.
 

Delmore continued to beg as James watched his hand slowly reach around to his back pocket. Sully’s eyes flickered and he saw it too. This was it.
 

“Mr. Granger, please—”
 

And then, in an instant, everything happened. Delmore didn’t have a chance. James didn’t know who fired first, only that the first sound was Rabbit tripping as he edged his way out onto the back porch. At the thud of Rabbit’s heel slipping down into the rotted wood, the room was lit with gunfire. The noise was paralyzing and, after the first shot, James could only see small zips of brightness crisscrossing the room as he fell to the floor and pulled the trigger over and over until there were no more bullets and the room was filled with smoke and soot, and, finally, the loudest silence he had ever heard descended upon his ears.
 

James had squeezed his eyes shut against the acrid smoke that filled the air, but as he became aware of the pounding emptiness in the room that replaced the roar of bullets, he slowly opened them. A haze hung in the air above him and it was the smell that hit him first. The sharp sting of spent ammunition surrounded him and mixed with the sickly reek of blood. Next, he began to feel. There was a terrible, deep throbbing in his shoulder and a searing pain along the left side of his head. He slowly raised his hand to his ear. When he brought his fingers back in front of his face, they were smeared with blood.
 

As his vision came back to him, and the smoke wafted higher up into the room, James was able to see around him. The first body his eyes met was Delmore’s. He was stretched out across the room with at least two bullet holes that James could see in his back. From where Delmore had been standing, in-between everyone, James was sure that there were more. His head was twisted awkwardly on his neck, so that James could see what was left of his face. The small pistol was still in his back pocket.
 

Beyond Delmore, James could make out the crumpled form of Sully Granger. His hat had been blown off and out onto the front porch. James watched his chest rise and fall, once, and then be still. He pushed himself up, the torn muscles in his shoulder screaming inside of him, until he was able to see Marlena. She was lying back in the corner of the room, curled up in a fetal position with the side of her face against the splintered floorboards, but her eyes were open. James and Marlena looked at each other for a long time before either of them blinked. Her eyes, serene, ghostly, but full of an amber light, were more beautiful than anything he had ever seen.

Then he felt Rabbit’s hands underneath his arms, pulling him to his feet. Rabbit’s lips were moving, but James couldn’t hear anything he was saying. Once he was standing, he helped Rabbit pull Marlena up and steady her. She had been shot through the side, just above her hip, but from the way she was moving, James hoped that the bullet had gone clean through her without hitting any organs. Blood had seeped through the front and back of her shirt and jeans, but she was able to stand. Rabbit, having fallen out onto the back porch right before the shooting started, was the only one who had not been injured. He stepped over the body of Sully Granger and looked out into the woods. James’ hearing was slowly coming back in one ear, and he could faintly hear what Rabbit was saying.
 

“I guess that other fella took off. There’s blood out here, but it looks like he went running through the woods.”

James didn’t care. He pulled Marlena to him and wrapped his arms around her. His shoulder burned as she pressed against it, and he felt her shudder as his hand brushed against her side. He held her, tighter and tighter, trying to make her pain his pain, her bones his bones, her life his life. He held her covered in blood, in gunpowder, in trepidation and in gratitude. He held her until they lapsed into a reprieve all their own, and the world fell away beneath them. He held her and he tried to let go.

SIXTEEN

The screen door to Marlena’s house banged open and Rabbit stumbled into the kitchen juggling a newspaper, a carton of cigarettes, and two plastic bags of take-out from Willie J’s Chicken and Bar-B-Q. He dropped the Marlboros and glared at James.

“How come I gotta be the one running all over getting stuff?”

James stood up from the kitchen table and retrieved the cigarettes. He didn’t offer to help Rabbit untangle himself from the plastic bags.

“I’m sorry, but did you get shot?”

Rabbit sighed and stepped over Roscoe, lying in the middle of the kitchen floor, whining.

“Fine.”

Grunting, Rabbit dropped the bags down on the table and yanked his hands free of the plastic loops.

“Sorry, Marlena, but I couldn’t find no more of them rolls of gauze like you wanted. They was all sold out at the drugstore.”

She took the newspaper from him, wincing as she leaned across the table.
 

“That’s okay. We’ll make do.”

James set the cigarettes on the kitchen counter and sat back down at the table. He pried open the Styrofoam containers of coleslaw and mashed potatoes.
 

“You hear anybody talking?”

Rabbit slid into a chair and reached for the box of chicken.

“Nah. Nothing we didn’t hear already on the TV this morning. On the radio they was talking ‘bout the sheriff saying he thinks Delmore’s gun was the same one used to kill that girl Nora up at Lucky’s.”

“Well, that’s good. Not for the girl, of course. But for us.”

He pushed a plastic fork out of its wrapper and poked it into the container of coleslaw. Rabbit took a bite of chicken and continued to talk with his mouth full.

“You know, I think you might be right. What you was saying before. If we just lay low and keep out of the way for a spell, maybe we can make it outta this thing after all.”

James searched through the greasy box of chicken for the piece he wanted.
 

“There’s a chance.”

James was about to bite into a drumstick when Marlena gasped. She had been flipping through the
Alachua County Today
, and now she spread the newspaper across the table to read it more clearly.

“Oh my God.”

James set his food down and rested his elbows on the table.
 

“What is it?”

Pointing to an article at the bottom of the page, Marlena began to read aloud:

GRANDMA HITS THE JACKPOT
! - Late yesterday afternoon, Florence Errol took her two miniature schnauzers for their daily stroll along the bank of the Santa Fe River in Fanning Springs. “I’ve done it every afternoon for the last twenty years,” the sixty-seven-year-old grandmother of eight claimed. Only this afternoon, Mrs. Errol got lucky. “I was just standing there, waiting for Izzy to finish her business, when I saw it laying right there, stuck up between some cypress knees.” Mrs. Errol returned to her mobile home court and got a neighbor, Edna Barrows, to go out to the river with her. Together, the two old ladies fished out the heavy black bag only to discover that it was full of cash! “A little over fifty thousand dollars,” reported deputy Ronald Hicks. No word yet on who the money belonged to or what it was doing in the Santa Fe River. Deputy Hicks said that the authorities will be holding on to the money until further notice. When asked if she was disappointed that she was not allowed to keep the money, Mrs. Errol replied, “Of course not. Money is the devil’s currency. I’m too old to darken my soul with those sorts of temptations.” Amen, Mrs. Errol!

When Marlena finished reading, they sat in silence, staring down at the newspaper. Rabbit’s mouth was hanging open so wide he could have caught flies with it. He gripped the edge of the table, and when he could finally speak, only three words came out.