Last Call for the Living (14 page)

Lucy cleaned. Put his books in order on the shelf. History and politics. Philosophy. Germany. Lucy tried to read excerpts. Didn't have the aptitude for it. But he took to the books, the learning, the discussions with his friends. There came a time when he seemed to be leading the discussions, leading the men.

There was the one older guy. They all called him Preacher. More and more often he came around. She could tell he'd been in prison. Big muscles, tattoos. A thick black goatee striped with gray. Looked like a chipmunk was living on his face but he was always kind to Lucy. Brought her flowers or pumpkin seeds. Little gifts for the trailer. He'd say, Please call me Leonard. The strongest, meanest-looking man she ever saw. They would leave in the night and she'd pass two or three days alone. Sleepless nights. The trailer like a rock in a dead field.

Then Lucy found the plastic bag from Gas N Go in the closet. It was filled with cash. Some of it was stained pink. She shrieked at the sight of the pistol. And hidden under a pile of his clothes was a sawed-off shotgun. She walked backwards until she hit the bed and started to cry.

That night Lucy ran outside when she saw the lights from the truck. It was cold and damp. One of the headlights was busted. When she saw him she started screaming. Slapping at him. His eye was injured. There was blood on his shirt, scratches down his neck. His knuckles looked like blue marbles. He dragged her in the house by her hair. His face burning red as autumn leaves. He swung at her and Lucy felt her jaw pop loose. Her eye dislodged. She couldn't believe this was happening.

She'd known this rage was in him. But it was like living near a fault line. You go on living there hoping to survive the inevitable.

He punched her in the stomach. Lucy collapsed. She heard him tearing the place apart. She held her tummy and tried to breathe. Then he was gone.

Forever.

The next day Lucy found out she was pregnant.

And, months later, she found out the baby had lived.

*   *   *

Tommy Lang's Nissan
Titan came over the hill and down into a big, sweeping curve. A sprawl of loblolly pines off to his left, farms on his right. The thunderstorms had come and gone all afternoon, leaving a mugginess behind, the late-summer weather predictable, as was the beautiful hour of twilight those storms afforded.

He drove past a house with chokeberry and shrubs bordering the property. A swing set in the front yard. Little yellow and red plastic toys scattered across the lawn. Sheets and pillowcases hung from a clothesline.

He slowed the pickup, looking east. A lone cow stood behind ironwood fence posts. The animal stared thoughtfully at Lang as the truck passed by. As if it had something telling to say.

The trees closed in, breaking every so often to reveal a house nestled back into the land. Dogs from one home ran toward his truck and barked. A man threw a football to his son in the yard. Lang waved. He didn't know them. He wasn't wearing his uniform or riding in the cruiser, either. Just felt like waving.

A couple hours away from the case had done him good. He hadn't slept much in the past three days, working twenty straight at one point. But the state and federal folks seemed happy to run the bank investigation without him now. He had a lot of paperwork back at the office. Phone calls to return. Scheduling at the detention center and courthouse, bailiff duties, court summonses, the administration of simple police work. He shuddered at the thought of that uncomfortable chair in his office. The lousy coffee. Other matters begging his attention. Checks for the month signed and mailed, complaints to address, an eviction to serve, requisition of radar trailers for the Traffic Enforcement Unit. There had been a domestic dispute in the parking lot of the Kroger, but Hansbrough had settled it with a handshake.

But the robbery was never far from Lang's mind.

He thought about the voice mail from Sallie Crews.

Lang was more attuned to her voice than the message itself. He liked her accent. It was warm and sophisticated, part English class and part working class. Pure Rockdale County.

There were other messages, including one from his daughter. All calls he didn't return, not yet. Not until a can of beer or seven.

What Lang really wanted was to stare at a wall and think of nothing in particular.

Back at the Sheriff's Department he'd looked harried, unshaven. He nodded to people in the halls.

They smiled as if forgiving him.

*   *   *

Lang had put
on a nice polo shirt and a clean pair of Carhartt dungarees. A splash of cologne he used maybe once a year. The bottle was purchased at a Woolworth's in Atlanta several Presidents ago. He figured like wine it aged well, smelling of some bygone era. Like the aroma of old newspapers, hay and horseshit in his father's barn, the exhaust of a two-door Biscayne—his first car. Taking pulls from a cold can of Schlitz between his legs, riding around like he was now. He used to get out on the dirt near the old Dumas line, abandoned back then, and race his buddies, of whom all but two were dead now. Make camp along the river and try their luck against the largemouth bass and sunfish.

Never once imagining he'd be where he was now.

Willie Nelson sang “City of New Orleans” on the radio. Lang recognized the old Lee Greenwood hit, hummed along to it. Never been much for singing. Even by himself in the truck.

Bugs and birds dashed across the road, which turned sharply, then sloped under a canopy of Judas trees. There was an abandoned shed slanted to one side, as if it considered lying down for an afternoon nap. A feral home a few yards away, swallowed by sunlight-starved kudzu. He passed a stretch of horse fence and finally saw Kalamity's Dodge parked in the driveway of her home. A big, round sun setting behind it.

Lang was excited after their conversation. He'd apologized first for calling her drunk the week before, a late-night conversation where he'd sworn to quit drinking, bemoaned his estranged family, the job, his life as one with too many wrong turns. Kal didn't say a word. Just listened. Let him vent, anticipating a similar call the next week or next month when Lang hit upon that special combination of whiskey and beer that sent him spiraling with self-pity. Some phone conversations he wouldn't even talk. He'd just listen to her while she read aloud whatever it was she was reading, a magazine or one of those mysteries she loved. Maybe turn up the television so he could hear it. Put the phone down near her head if she'd been sleeping.

They had—as damaged human beings—an understanding.

For years she took him in. Cooked for him. Drank with him. They'd make love. By morning any sense of commitment would have worn off. Weeks passed before they wanted or sought each other's company again. Off-duty he'd slip into her bar and drink all night. Then Kalamity would take him home. Never been quick to judge. Years like this and not one word from her about it. Yet Lang knew early on that he was being used as much as she was.

He wanted to tell her things, too. About the robbery. About the bank teller, Charlie Colquitt. Probably dead. Visions of that feral child behind a cage, barking at him, walking on all fours down busy sidewalks in town. Nightmares where he woke up screaming at the top of his lungs. He wanted to tell Kal how he was starting to lose his grip. Not caring if he lived or died. Tell her about the loneliness and the binges that temporarily cured it.

Eating a bullet.

Lang often imagined who would find him if he did such a thing. Hunters, maybe, stumbling upon a gnarled mummy in the woods. A hole in the top of his skull, obscured by rotten leaves and rags of clothing. A picture of his family in one hand.

A gun in the other.

*   *   *

A sudden sense
of caution struck Lang. From the driveway he could tell the kitchen door was open. Flies buzzed in the front yard. A hummingbird hovered near a feeder. Other things perched and observing. Lang ran a hand across his sweaty nape. He eyed the front door again, the windows to either side. No lights on. Nothing.

Near the kitchen door Lang could see dimly inside. A glass had shattered on the floor. He craned his neck and looked into the living room. He saw Kalamity.

He ran back to the truck, retrieved his personal firearm from a holster mounted under the steering column. A Kimber Warrior .45 ACP. He checked the chamber. Satisfied, he faced the house again.

The living room came into focus, a familiar setting now off-kilter. Kalamity had a bullet hole in her sternum and one under her right eye. The image of her burned like a nuclear shadow on his brain.

Where all the bad shit of his life was stockpiled.

The freezer door was open. Someone had thrown Kalamity's cat inside. Hershel's fur was matted with ice. An eye hung from a tether. Water leaked down the front of the refrigerator and pooled on the floor.

He scanned the kitchen. A brass shell casing lay where the linoleum ended and the carpet began. Foolish to leave it, unless the cartridge had been wiped down. Lang looked at her body again, at her smashed and swollen feet, at the slack death mask that was her face. That empty stare he'd never grown used to.

He inched down the hallway, peering down the length of his thumb that was parallel to the muzzle, should he have to point and shoot. He listened for any sound that was out of place, any creaking board or muffled breath a portent for violence.

The bathroom was clear, as were the hall closet and sewing room. Lang entered the bedroom. The bed was made. But the bookshelf and dresser had been rifled through, ransacked, books and picture frames littering the floor. Same with the closet and nightstand. Socks, underwear, jewelry, broken glass, papers and envelopes. All thrown about.

Her killer or killers, he speculated, were sloppy and probably hopped up. Kalamity brutalized and executed. It just didn't make sense.

Lang thought about
they,
assuming there had been more than one.

They
hadn't stolen anything. Nothing was missing as far as he could tell. Her purse was left neglected on the kitchen table. So they threw her around the living room, and onto the coffee table. They tied her up and worked her over. Even drank one of his beers, because Kalamity didn't drink beer.
They
didn't want her; they thought she knew something they wanted to know. And whether she did or didn't give it up they shot her anyway.

Lang remembered Kalamity's sister, known among the county gossipers as a family embarrassment. She'd been a schoolteacher once. Developed a bad taste for drugs and worse taste in men. These facts moved in Lang's mind. Thoughts set free like catfish in a pond.

He left the house as carefully as he entered and called Dispatch on his cell phone.

While he waited, Lang walked the property and kept an eye on the road. His heart and gut and throat swollen with a feeling beyond rage. Beyond sadness for Kalamity. By the time Deputy Bower arrived in a shower of gravel Lang still had no proper name for all he felt.

*   *   *

Charlie woke from
a nightmare soaked with sweat. He rolled over. Hummingbird sighed softly in her sleep.

“Untie me, Hummingbird. I've got to pee.”

“I cain't. It's against the rules,” she mumbled.

“Please, Hummingbird. I won't tell. Please.”

She rubbed a hand down his chest to his boxers, grabbed him with a moan of pleasure. When she finished she sat up drowsily and untied Charlie's wrists.

He got to his feet, the need to piss returning so bad he thought he might go on the floor.

In the bathroom he raised the lid on the toilet bowl, surprised to find excrement in it. His vision was fuzzy. He squinted down into the bowl.

When he saw the heads of tiny white worms Charlie backed away. His need suddenly replaced by a sudden revulsion. He ran from the bathroom. Out of the cottage. Into the darkness.

*   *   *

Charlie struggled barefoot
down a rocky path. He turned his ankle and yelped but kept limping along until the path got easier. Creekside the soil was moist and soft under his feet. He looked up. A quarter moon in the sky moved in and out of sight above the understory of redbuds and dogwoods. He stopped to catch his breath and vomited.

Charlie surveyed the trees ahead. Sixty-foot plumed pines. Spruces. Ghoulish shadows in every direction. In his state of mind the forest seemed to swallow him.

He thought he heard the footfall of an animal. Deer? A fox? A bear?
Jesus, help me,
he prayed, thinking himself a deathbed believer, not sure what good it would do anyway. For a moment he was certain he'd cry, but no tears came.

He hid behind a tree, gripping the trunk, his hands moving through a silken web of bark lice. There were little white eggs snug within the crevices of tree bark, the lice cool and stringy.

The woods were far from quiet. The whines and pulsations of night creatures everywhere, above and around him. Charlie felt victimized by the sound.
Got to keep going,
he told himself.
There'll be a road. And roads lead to other roads.

The trees opened on a stream lined with ferns and black birch, the water trickling over slabs of limestone. The swath cut between rocky banks ten feet high. Charlie climbed down the bank, his feet sinking into silt three inches deep. The water glowed a blue-black in the moonlight. He crouched on the bank, wrapping his arms around himself, absorbed by fantasy. He imagined a news crew rushing to interview him. A blanket was thrown around his shoulders. A hot cup of soup offered. His rescuers wore windbreakers, earbuds, the cords disappearing beneath their collars.

What would I say?

Where would I begin?

He got to his feet and crossed the stream, pausing for a moment at the sight of a moccasin in flight. The cool water came up to his shins. Polished stones and mud underfoot. He reached the opposite bank, shivering and tired. Found a ledge he could climb, another gateway to a slope of thick woods. He tried to negotiate the steep terrain with caution but lost his balance, rebounding from tree to tree, finally tripping and falling at the feet of an ancient-looking cottonwood.