Hellbender (Murder Ballads and Whiskey Book 2) (34 page)

“It’s over,” I said. “We can go home.”

I pulled at the knots, but the twine didn’t release them so easily. I picked up a hunk of coke ash and sawed at the rope.

She waited impatiently while I cut at the twine around her neck. She pulled the loose rope away as I freed her waist. When I finished with the rope at her waist, she stepped away from the post and I held her. She said, “My head hurts so bad.”

Her eyes were red and tired. Her hair was matted. Coal dust clung to her scalp and eyebrows. I lifted her wrist and saw scabs forming over the gashes from Odelia’s rock. I shook my head.

She said, “My eye.”

I pushed her hair away from her face. Blood was pooling beneath her skin. The tissue above her eye had begun to swell. “Is the bone broken?”

“I don’t know. We’ll go straight to the hospital, okay?” She nodded, and smiled.

I pulled her head to my shoulder.

And then the tiniest of grunts slipped from her lips.

I retreated a few inches and watched a trickle of blood fall from the edge of her smile. She wiped her chin.

She gasped frantically then slumped a little in my arms. I slid my hand up her back to support her and discovered blood.

“Alex!” My fingers found a splintered point of wood sticking from her back. She gasped when my fingers brushed past it.

Lucinda smirked, wiping blood from her fingertips. “Henry, you little prick bastard. You should have known well enough that I wasn’t going down alone. Never did, ain’t going to start now.”

“Ben!” I yelled. “Ben, we need you in here!”

All the smells came to me at once. Sea salt. Blueberries. Pine. Ash. The river. Alex’s Chanel.

Another shot came from a rifle outside. Ben said, “We got two coming down the mountain, Henry.” Three shots came rapid fire, like from a pistol.

“Just rest, Alex. Don’t try to move.”

And that was the last thing I said before the rage consumed me. I lunged at Lucinda as Odelia hit me in the ribs with an old two-by-four. I stumbled to the floor. But the pain didn’t matter anymore. The pain was an illusion. The pain was a stimulant.

Alex watched from her side, her face resting on the cold ground. With all that she had left, she said, “I forbid you in my bed. I forbid you in my house and stable and barn and springhouse and woodshed.”

On angry legs I rose, throwing myself at Odelia, grabbing her throat. My hands shook. I swore I’d squeeze every last fucking bit of life from her. Her face blued, then purpled. She scratched my face and neck with her bony nubs. Blood trickled from the burning cuts she drew in my skin. When she tried to pry my hands away from her neck I saw bits of my skin stuck to her fingertips.

Alex weakly went on, “I forbid you in the name of the Holy Trinity from my blood, my flesh, my body and soul.”

Gunshots crackled over top of a pounding peal of thunder. Ben was closer.

I shook Odelia as I squeezed. I was about to remove her head from her body when Lucinda hit me in the back with a framing timber. My breath escaped in a huff. I covered my head.

“I forbid you all the windows and doors and nail holes in my house and stable and springhouse until you have shaken all the mountains and counted the springs, crossed all the rivers counted all the rocks, counted all the leaves on the trees…” She began to cough. In little more than a whisper she went on, “…counted all the stars in the heavens until the very blessed day when the Mother of God gives birth to her second son.”

Odelia fell to the floor, clutching her throat. Lucinda retreated to Alex’s fallen form, then stepped on her neck.

Footsteps approached, light and fast. Marching with purpose through the steady rain. I closed my eyes and waited.

The first one to enter said my name. “Henry. Oh my gosh. Alex!”

It wasn’t the voice I’d expected to hear.

It was Katy.

“Oh, Alex. I heard you singing and got here as fast as I could.” Katy had a shotgun resting on her slinged arm. Bandages peeked out from beneath her t-shirt. The crimson stain of blood was still bright against her fair skin. With bared teeth and the click of the safety she backed Lucinda toward the mountain’s rocky face. “Into the mine.”

Preston came in right on her heels with a hunting rifle. Rachael directed Lucinda further into the mine, then prodded Odelia with her boot to do the same.

The witch refused, proudly lifting herself to face Rachael and Katy.

“They’ll hunt you down,” Odelia said. “I reckon they’d let you go if I explained you was charitable.”

“Let us go?” Katy spoke over everybody else. “He ran like a chicken from a puppy. They’re all hiding in a coke oven on the other side of the river somewhere.”

Preston stood next to her. His brand new Vans were covered in mud.

“Shooting girls? What the hell’s wrong with you all anyway?” Katy poked Odelia with her rifle. “Where’s Darren at, honey? Shouldn’t he be the one on his knees instead of you?”

Lucinda drifted back into the light. Her fists were clenched. She bared her teeth and said, “You little cunt—”

A flash of fire leapt from Preston’s rifle, cutting right through the darkness of the storm. The shot snapped the little room right in half.

Lucinda fell into the darkness. She writhed on the floor and clutched her belly.

Katy said, “Nice shot, honey. You weren’t aiming for her head, were you?”

Another shot came from outside. Ben popped open the cylinder of Greg’s old Colt Single Action Army and pulled the empties out as he came into the room.

“You lying little bitch.” Odelia cried, “My boys ain’t cowards.”

Rachael said, “The trees saw them leave. Ask them.”

“You’ll choke if you say another word about them boys,” Odelia said. “Ask,” Rachael said sternly.

Odelia lowered her face into her palms. She began to weep. “This ain’t over,” she said. “It ain’t.”

“It is,” Katy said. She didn’t wait to pull the trigger and shot Odelia in the thigh. “I thought you’d be too proud to cry.”

The thin woman crumbled, clutching her shattered leg. Katy lowered the double-barrel at Odelia’s head, backing her toward the shaft. Katy pulled the spent shell with her good hand and sent it flying with a flick of her finger. “Back,” she said. “Out of the light.” Katy pushed a new shell into the chamber.

Odelia pulled herself back into the darkness. She laid herself over Lucinda’s still body.

“Preston,” Ben said. “Help Rachael get Alex into the Jeep.”

Alex had fallen to the ground near the post where she’d been tied. She was on her side, breathing shallow breaths. I dropped to my knees, then pushed the hair from her eyes.

“You have to get me out of here,” she said. “No time.”

Preston returned from outside with a blanket. Alex tried to roll herself onto it, trailing blood. I gently pushed her back to the ground. Rachael laid the blanket alongside her back, then she and Preston eased her onto the makeshift stretcher. Fragile as a Pink Lady’s Slipper, she gasped when Preston and Rachael lifted the ends of the blanket. I followed them out.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

Her eyes met mine. Those blue eyes no longer saw a wedding or next summer. The beach house was a memory, tomorrow a dream. All those sad eyes saw now was the gray sputum of a cranky cold-front and my sad face.

“I’m sorry.”

But she didn’t hear anymore.

We laid her in the back of the Jeep. I wrapped her wound with some clean blankets. “Let me get this.” Preston reached for the shank.

“No!” I yelled. “Don’t touch it or she’ll bleed to death.” “Sorry, man.”

Katy climbed into the back with Alex and stroked her cheek and held her hand. From inside the building, Ben yelled, “Preston, get their guns. Ammo. Everything they got.”

Preston collected Rachael’s rifle and shells and put it into the cab of Fenton’s truck. He set his rifle across the seat, showed me a box of rounds, and laid those on the seat, too.

“Go with Ben.” Katy handed me the shotgun. “An ambulance is going to meet us in town.”

She handed me a clean shirt and my rain jacket. The smell of plastic and sunscreen reminded me that just a few weeks ago I’d been wearing it in Ohiopyle. Katy pulled out her cell phone, deftly managing to dial with her good hand. “Hey. Lassie found the kids. Trapped in a mine. They’re on their way.”

Then after a long pause, she said, “No. She’s hurt. Meet us at the hospital.”

She hung up. “She’ll be all right. You think my mom’s going to let anything happen while she’s in charge?”

I kissed Alex on the cheek. A ghost of a smile passed her lips as her eyes followed an arc of lightning across the sky. We all jumped as the thunder rattled the Jeep’s windows.

Katy said, “Come here. I have something else for you.”

She handed me a small bundle, a bundle of ferns wrapped in string. “Put it into your pocket.”

“For what?”

“To keep the devil away.”

“What is it?” I squeezed it. Spines jabbed my fingers. “Shit, Katy.”

“A thistle. What’d you think?” She said it like it was absurd for me to have expected anything else.

I pulled the twine off to see if there was more to it than that. Seeing that there wasn’t, I put it into my pocket.

“Katy, I don’t know how much more magic I can take.”

“Well, how’s not believing been working for you? Just shooting Charlie Lewis ain’t going to do it, cousin.”

“Henry,” Alex, interrupted and bade me to come closer. She reached into her jacket and removed Jane’s old envelope, now tattered and water-stained. “Katy, give Henry…”

Distant rumbles echoed off the steep canyon walls. A train whistle floated up from the tracks. The train seemed like a thousand years ago. Katy shuffled through the envelope, flipping through the slips and scraps Jane left for us. She handed me a photocopy. “Here you go. This should just about do it.”

At a glance I knew what it was, what it meant. I put it into my jacket pocket. Katy waited for my calm to return, then whispered, “Just remember…as is the sky, so is the earth. There’s your path.”

“Go,” I said, shutting the hatch. Preston put the Jeep into gear. Rachael watched me as they passed, finally waving as they drifted down the old dirt road. Brake lights flared as the Jeep lost traction in the slimy clay.

“She’ll be okay, man.” Ben stood in the doorway, pistol still leveled at Odelia. “You want to put this one to bed?”

In his other hand he held a hand grenade. “For snakes.”

I shook my head and walked into the mine, past their altar, the tokens and symbols of their ignorance, their excuses to do whatever the fuck they felt like whenever. Lucinda breathed heavily, but otherwise didn’t move. Odelia spit on my legs and feet and twisted a sumac twig in her bony fingertips. She opened her mouth to speak and I put the shotgun against her temple.

I reached for Jane’s thistle pendant on Lucinda’s neck. “You leave that girl alone,” Odelia said.

I poked her forehead with the gun and she retreated. I yanked the necklace, put it into my pocket, and backed away.

Ben held out the grenade.

“Grab the pin,” Ben said as I stepped out of the shed.

I hooked a finger and he pulled. He stuck the pistol under his arm so he could twist and turn the top of the grenade with his other hand. “Secondary safety,” he said.

I nodded.

“Frag out, bitches.” He tossed the grenade. As soon as it left his hand I heard a small click. He pushed me toward the corner of the building.

I almost thought it wasn’t going to go off. As soon as I relaxed the ground shook with a giant bang, like a pickup truck falling from the sky. Dust and ash came through the door where the rain quickly batted it down.

“No fingerprints. See? That’s how you do it.”

I fumbled with the red plastic shells, shook them gently, listening for the slight crackle of birdshot. The faint rot of gunpowder lingered on my fingers even after I pocketed them. They weren’t much bigger than the words and actions that started all this. They weren’t even worth their weight in revenge.

The shotgun slept on my lap, like an old front-porch dog. Brass eyes stared up at me from the back end of the barrel.
Or were they mouths
? Either way they were tools, means to an end. The long straight barrels said nothing. It was a well-oiled, well-cared for weapon. The painter has his brush, the conductor his baton. This seemed to be the most effective tool for the job at hand.

As we came through Davis, Preston approached in the opposite lane in Ben’s Jeep. Katy rolled down the window and yelled over the squeak of the wipers. “I’m picking up Chloe. Mom went with the ambulance.”

“How is she?” Ben said.

Katy only shrugged her shoulder. Ben began to roll up his window. Katy added, “She’ll be okay. You have to know that.”

I wasn’t listening. The words may as well have been sirens blaring in my ears, so I tuned them out. I couldn’t even think in words anymore. My thoughts came as images, individual frames of a film. But they weren’t moving fast enough to tell a cohesive story. The same snapshots kept playing over and over and over.