Hellbender (Murder Ballads and Whiskey Book 2) (35 page)

Ben said very little as he drove. The truck’s radio told us about the weather, the news, and the sales taking place at the farm center in Elkins. It didn’t say a god damned thing about Alex or how she was doing.

Too much information. Too much noise
. I reached over and turned it off. Windmills stared at us from the top of Backbone Mountain. Great white sentinels protecting my mountains from the outside world. Their blades spun slow rotations in the gusty storm, a mesmerizing illusion that made me seasick. The old truck coughed and sputtered as we turned onto Olsen Tower Road. Mud splashed up the sides of the truck, onto the windshield. All around there was a gray fog. The hemlock and laurels were nothing more than silhouetted ghosts. The mist, which was little more than a tired cloud, came to rest on the mountaintop, kept us hemmed in to our own pod of visibility.

I could hear the rush of streams, swollen by the sudden storm. I could hear cascades falling to their death at the river’s edge. We crested the mountain, then descended. The tires struggled to stay on the narrow fire road, which was really not much more than an old logging spur with its ties and rails removed. The trail was built to connect a narrow gauge railroad to the main line. As the passenger, I sat too near the edge. Half of me wanted to grab the steering wheel away from Ben and crash us into the mountainside. The other half wanted us to plummet off the mountain altogether.

The tires slid through puddles and mud. Ben wrangled the steering wheel like it’d come alive. We ran through cascades, temporary falls created by the downpour. Ephemeral showers that would die when the storm did. The jarring tattoo of water hitting the windshield and metal hood pulled me back into the anger of the moment.

The yellow gate at the bottom had been forced open. It hung idly on its hinges like a broken jaw. A busted padlock sat in the latch, right next to the sign that said the right-of-way was private property. Violators would be fined if caught.

Ben swung the truck over the rail with a bounce and a scrape of metal on metal. The
whumpwhumpwhump
of the tires over the railroad ties agitated me. Ben sped up now that we had traction. Green flashes of laurel raced past my window. On Ben’s side it was the brown and bubbling Blackwater.

Flood had settled along its banks. The coffee-colored torrent bore logs and plastic pop bottles and tires. The change in color came from the heavy load of sediment it now carried. Foamy hydraulics crested behind magnificent boulders. Creamy waves lapped the branches of trees that waded well above the normal high water mark.

A scouring was occurring while I watched. When it was done the sheen of fresh rock would cradle the river from its headwaters to its quiet conjunction with the Cheat down in Hendricks. Sandstone waited for the quiet return of mosses and leaf litter that would embrace seeds from maples and spruce.

I made it rain
, I thought.
This is my fucking magic
.

Ben slowed down when we saw brake lights and four-way flashers. In the fog I could see armed figures standing around a group of sitting ones. Postures said more than faces. I breathed deep relief when Champ ran over to the driver’s side door to meet us.

Fenton cupped his hand over his eyes and peeked through my window. I rolled it down and could see he’d been bandaged, patches of gray hair poked through the wrappings like weeds in a sidewalk.

“You look like shit,” he said with a deadpan smirk his face could barely contain.

“You okay?” I asked. Guilt made the query sound particularly urgent.

“Aw hell, Henry. You think this was the first time I been shot at?” He smiled, then put his hand on my neck. He gave a little squeeze, then asked, “How is she?”

My pap had joined him at the window. I shrugged my shoulders and glared through the windshield at the men seated along the tracks. My dad strolled out of the laurel with his rifle over his shoulder. Sobriety suited him.

“Is this all of them?” Ben said, changing the subject.

“No,” my pap said. “Tasso and some of his men turned themselves in. From what I hear they did a lot of confessing. Said they didn’t have the stomach for it anymore. The ones you’re looking for are downstream.”

“That’s where we’re heading then.” Ben put the truck in gear.

“Henry, why don’t you just wait?” Pap said. “I’ve made some calls. We’ll get this all sorted out.”

“Pap, talking isn’t going to fix this one. Jamie’s still in the hospital and now so is Alex.” I shook my head as I said it.

He backed away from the truck. The old man didn’t speak for a long time. His gaze took him along the steel rails to a faraway place he knew he couldn’t go. My pap rubbed his jaw as I waited.

I didn’t want his blessing. I didn’t want his respect. He didn’t even have to understand. But he had to know that this feud, no matter how long it’d existed prior to today, became finish when they took Janie. And when Alex went from observer to player I knew I had it in me to finish it. I’d never seen her so frail, so torn. “I’ll never see her in so much pain as long as I live. That’s a promise.”

“You do what you have to do, Henry.” My dad stood beside his dad, and although he didn’t contradict him directly, he made his feelings known. “I reckon you won’t come back until you avenge Janie.”

He stepped away from the truck. “Be careful,” was the last thing he said.

Ben put the old pickup into gear. The idle changed pitch. “I’m glad you’re all right, Fenton.”

“I know, buddy. I’m glad you’re all right.”

The truck slid gently forward and my pap walked alongside. “You don’t have to do this.”

Ben slowed down, but I didn’t answer. “Ben,” he said. “There are alternatives.”

“You didn’t see her, laying there in the dirt,” I said.

My pap’s eyes fell as we drifted ahead and Ben found second gear. Then it was just us. Two cousins. Old friends, loyal to a fault.

The path we took no longer had lefts or rights, signs to tell us if we were going the correct way. Our course had been plotted, our map either written in the stars or in the random scattering of cobbles that lined these tracks. We couldn’t be certain, not with our blindfolds on.

It had been so long since I’d known where I’d wanted to go that my path had been lost to me. Since losing my way I’d known I couldn’t go back to where I began, back to the beginning. There was nothing left of the beginning. I had Alex to think about. My relationship with my family had changed. My house was gone. All I had left was the taste of blood in my mouth and bad metaphor on my lips.

None of it was of any use to me now.

But the gun was. It’d get me peace of mind. And this truck was still useful. It’d get me there faster.

Ben laid on the gas, pushing the truck until it began to rattle. The windshield, the doors, they all shook with the ferocity of a steam train. This path, not built for trucks, shook the rubber off the tires and the paint off the body. Now grinning, Ben turned his hat, a crazy engineer bound for the siding with fire in his belly and steam in his head. He laughed at cautions and kicked the brake pedal clean off.

This train was rolling. Momentum and a cargo of rage barreled along behind us. Ben kept his hand off the brake. I just kept shoveling coal in. Thunder shouted our arrival through the canyon, lightning guided us through crossings. The torrent of rain hit the hood, now radiating with the heat of a thousand horses. The dime-sized drops turned into a trail of steam that followed us down the track like a specter of all those who’d plied this canyon before us.

And the speed… All was a blur, save for the twin steel rails that rushed ahead of us. Now that our tires were shredded we rode those rails on empty rims. The hum of smooth metal on smooth metal kept my mind sharp.

After three or four miles the fog thinned. To our right the forest took a long step back from the tracks. Ben slowed. I rolled down my window. “This is it,” I said. “We should walk from here.”

We left the truck, taking only what we wore, pockets bulging with shotgun shells and brass-hulled bullets. Ben caressed the bolt-action, scoped for long range shots, and his compound bow. I had the shotgun. I wanted to see their faces when I squeezed the trigger.

“How do you know?” Ben said.

I pointed to the Lewis Lumber flags that separated the tracks from the clear-cut.

We stared into the stump-ridden haze, our eyes struggled to adjust to the devastation. Boulders shivered, naked without their cover of oak and pine. Streams coughed and sputtered, defenseless without a layer of laurel to shield them from the increasingly abrasive spring sky. All that remained were stumps, ripped from the ground by heavy machinery. Roots inverted in a skyward gesture that revealed their cause of death. Fireflies blinked silently at the edge of the destruction.

They’d begged for their lives.

We strode over the gashed earth where skidders and bulldozers had torn through the soil. Past smoldering piles of ash that used to be
tsuga canadensis
,
kalmia latifolia
. Indian pipes, whorled loosestrife, and flowering raspberry were little more than smoke signals now. A first-hand account of the destruction.

We crept along the tracks through the bracken ferns. Their leathery fronds were the only things besides us still breathing here. We splashed across streams that stripped topsoil away from the mountain. We slid along rock faces, well aware that this desert of a forest would not live again until well after we were gone. This used to be a haven for hellbenders and ravens. Now it was just mud.

With no reason to pause we moved fast.

There were no bear prints to spot, no berries to pick. The nearby crack of thunder reminded us of our exposure next to the tracks. We listened for voices and moved downstream. We never heard anything except for our own breathing and the sound of raindrops pounding the slippery clay. There were no birds, no other signs of life except for the fireflies. The way their green flashes substituted for stars made it hard to believe we were separated only by inches instead of light-years. Vega had a twin here on earth, and from my point of view the bug flashed a bit brighter. That those stars, nuclear furnaces for trillions of worlds, could be out-shone by a firefly was inexplicable.

For nearly fifteen minutes we walked the halfway between forest and the nothing that Charlie had created. Always one foot in the past, one foot in the ugly present. It was a staggered pace, but well-suited for what we were doing. I wasn’t supposed to enjoy this as much as I was.

“You think this is the road?” I pointed to a mud path that ran away from the river. Probably the only other way in or out.

Ben shrugged.

I stepped onto the path and walked ahead.

The slimy clay was pocked with the diagonal tread of skidders. The iridescent sheen of motor oil lingered on puddles. After another ten minutes of walking we arrived at a portable office and a pair of pickups. Even from here I could see the Lewis logo staring at me from the driver’s door. The windshield had been replaced since that day they chased us from Ohiopyle. I could smell the smoke from food cooking.

“This is it. Find a spot and stay low,” I told Ben as I crept ahead.

“I’m coming. You think this is all about you?” He playfully slapped my shoulder. “Of course you do. I got bones to pick, too.”

“Please. Hang back. Cover me?”

But Ben did what Ben wanted, his reluctance to walk in my footsteps made obvious by his pace. He still went through the motions, checking his ammo, peering through the scope. I put my hand up, a mild protest.

He smirked. “One of them put my dad in the hospital.”

“I’m just trying to give you a way out. That’s all, man.”

“Henry,” he said, stopping for the first time since we left the truck. “You listen to me, now.”

I lowered my eyes. Like God’s own thunder, I knew what was coming. “I don’t need anybody to give me a fucking way out. Hear?”

“I know, man. I’m sorry.”

“Let me finish.” He shook his head and stared into the fog. “You know where the fuck I was while COP Keating in Kamdesh was getting shelled all the way back to Kabul? Got a sinus infection that turned into pneumonia. Sitting in a fucking field hospital sucking down orange juice. I told them I wasn’t sick and begged them to get me back with my guys.”

I bit my lip and nodded.

“You know where my boys are now? Scattered all over the country in National Cemeteries.” He grabbed my neck and pulled me toward him. He rested his forehead right against mine. “You’re basically my brother. Janie’s just like my little sis. I’m going to make sure this ends. For you, your old man. For Katy. For my parents.”

He hugged me, pulling my head into his shoulder. “Man, it’s got to end. I can’t keep fighting forever.”

He let me go and I put my arm around him. “Thanks, Ben.” I could feel him relax.

He said, “Tonight’s going to be a whiskey night. You know that, right?”

He turned toward the trailer and trucks. The hundred or so yards that separated us from the Lewises were foggy and they went by real fast. With evening approaching they were growing dark as well. The slosh of Ben’s feet on the muddy path was comforting. I never could’ve done this alone.