Last Call for the Living (19 page)

“
—
more than a week I reckon.”

“Feels like longer.”

“Where is he?”

Charlie shook his head. “I don't know.”

Lipscomb sighed, letting a well-timed beat pass before slapping Charlie across the cheek. It was meant to be playful, but hard enough to rattle his teeth.

“Where did the motherfucker go, bank teller?”

“I told you I don't know! He leaves. He comes back,” Charlie said, smarting from the pain. “They had me tied up like a dog most the time. I think he had a truck.”

“A truck?”

“Yes, s-sir.”

“Well, Jesus, bank teller. You're just full of revelation tonight.”

Charlie refused to look at Lipscomb anymore, as if his nervous system wouldn't allow it.

“Seriously,” Lipscomb continued, “a fucking revelation. That is my goddamn pickup truck. A C-ten. Bought it in '80. Replaced the ball joints and brakes myself. Got a crate three-fifty under the hood and ten thousand miles on it. Know why there's so few miles on it?”

Charlie shuddered. Shook his head.

“Because I was in a place called
prison
.”

“I don't want anything to do with all this,” Charlie said, his whisper as much a protest as it was a plea.

But Lipscomb didn't hear him. Charlie got the impression the man didn't hear a lot, except for the sound of his own voice.

“Now what does that tell you, bank teller? Hicklin driving my truck and all?”

“That you all were friends?”

“My gawd, Nathan, you hear that?”

“I did hear it. The boy is puttin'
two
and
two
together like a regular crackerjack.”

“Well, bank teller?” Lipscomb said.

“I don't understand.”

“That's okay, bank teller,” he said. “We'll just wait right here for our
friend,
Hicklin. A hunch tells me he'll be back. And if not, well, I'm sure there's things we could do to kill time.”

Lipscomb ran a calloused hand through Charlie's hair. His palms hardened like the sole of a shoe.

*   *   *

Flock peered past
shreds of newspaper that still covered one of the windows. Darkness. Not even a flood lamp to illuminate the cottage's immediate vicinity. He settled into a chair across from the couch, spitting on the floor, the shotgun resting across his lap. Lipscomb lit a cigarette. Ran another calculated hand through Charlie's hair.

The smell of slow ruin was all around them. Charlie couldn't keep from trembling. He stared at his feet. Then, summoning some resolve, looked up at Lipscomb.

Lipscomb followed Charlie's eyes, too, a malicious smirk appearing, a hand reaching for his sidearm. Charlie shook his head again.

“No
—
no
—
”

“I have to admit,” Lipscomb interrupted, “those are some ugly feet you got there. Is that a hangnail I see? Toe jam? Them little pieces of lint that find their way up there. You chew on the nails, don't you, bank teller? I can always tell when a man chews on his toenails. The nail grows back all funny. The way
yours
do.”

He grabbed Charlie's filthy left foot, inspecting it, running the tip of his thumb along the nail of the big toe like you would the edge of a blade.

“Been hunched over, chewing on 'em, haven't you?” he said, his voice rising to a fervor. “I take good care of my feet,” he declared. “Always have. Now yours? I think they could use some improving on.”

He raised Charlie's foot up to the light.

“You know how I feel about ugly feet?” he continued, his voice bold and worthy of a pulpit. “Well, do you, bank teller? It's all about the socks. And the shoes. But you obviously inherited some awful feet. Probably your momma, I suspect. And I think they could use some rearranging. A little swelling can do toes some good. Now how 'bout it, bank teller?”

He relinquished his hold on Charlie's foot, removed the magazine from the .45, jacked out the round in the pipe and slammed the clip home again. He reversed his grip, the muzzle firmly in his left hand, the butt of the handgun taking on the look of a dead blow hammer. Charlie shouted in anticipation, but there was nothing he could do. Lipscomb skirted the coffee table away with his leg, hopped off the couch onto his knees, before he snatched Charlie's quivering foot again. He raised the gun and hollered:

“Tell me, you sorry sack of shit! Where's Hicklin? Where's our fucking money?”

Charlie shrieked, his eyes growing wild with fright.

“No! No! No!”

Lipscomb brought the butt of the pistol down hard on Charlie's left foot, striking the big toe with the force of a blacksmith forging steel. Charlie felt the nail come loose. Blood popped from the wound like a blister bursting. Some notion of self-preservation occurred to him. He turned on his side, kicking his legs as though trying to tread water.

His foot caught Lipscomb square in the face.

But the big man only laughed, playfully swatting away Charlie's bicycling legs like he was toying with an energetic puppy. The two men hooted in laughter. Charlie continued to struggle, swinging his legs back and forth to avoid the blows. Then Lipscomb caught hold of Charlie's right foot, hammered at it twice, let go, only to grab it again.
Is this a game we're playing?
Charlie tired, the pain turning dull and bearable, and for a moment he thought himself human in appearance only.

Desperation churned in him like the paddle wheel of a sinking steamboat. He hoped that someone would pick up a gun and shoot him in the head. That familiar refrain, said aloud or merely imagined he wasn't sure:

Please stop! Please don't do this! Please stop!

But Charlie couldn't account for the sudden swell of courage. He jabbed both legs at Lipscomb, one foot catching his captor under the chin. Solid as an uppercut. Lipscomb was stunned momentarily. He recovered, lurching forward on his knees with the handgun hammer raised high in the air.

“You li'l sumbitch!”

He swung, catching Charlie's rib cage like a slab of hanging beef. Lipscomb struck a kneecap, a shin, a wrist. Bone and flesh wrought by the flat edge of the magazine. Charlie cried out, his hands in spasm, his fingers rigid and curled like fishhooks. With his last ounce of strength he lunged at Lipscomb's face, gouging his eyes in a final desperate attempt at survival.

He reeled with a painful grunt, but Flock was there with the stock of the shotgun. He struck Charlie in the forehead, knocking him backwards.

“Motherfucker almost took out my eyes!”

That's when Lipscomb unsheathed a knife.

*   *   *

Lipscomb steadied the
Randall knife over Charlie's face before running the blade down the bridge of his nose and across his quivering lips. Charlie's heart started to shimmy in his chest like a dryer out of balance.

“Ever had a dick in your ass, bank teller? Know what that
feels
like? It's a pain no man was ever really supposed to experience. But God in his infinite wisdom let us figure these things out for ourselves. And he might not have intended it, but we discovered the human anus and found it worthy of fucking.”

Charlie's vision blurred, the main room of the cottage taking on the warped appearance of a fun house. Lipscomb flicked the tip of the knife blade against Charlie's cheek. A nick appeared, producing a sliver of blood. Charlie sensed the end of his life approaching.

And a death he could have never imagined.

It was not until a round of buckshot ripped through the front door with the force of a dozen nail guns that he thought his odds of survival had improved.

A startled Lipscomb and Flock dove for cover.

Charlie knew Hicklin was near.

Charlie's saving might be a possibility. If not a priority.

 

The Lord has left us now.

 

NINE

A light came
on inside the church. Station wagons and pickup trucks found it like moths to a flood lamp. The church had a gravel drive, a small porch where an attendant lit lanterns and hung them from hooks. The wood structure didn't look like a place of worship. A fresh coat of paint had been applied, as if its tenants decided to put another Band-Aid on the wound. A two-by-four had been tacked above the door. Written in a fluid script, someone long ago had stenciled the words:
The Church of the Holy Lamb with Signs Following.

When the gravel drive filled, people parked their vehicles with an instinct for order along the shoulder of the road. The women wore ankle-length dresses. Hair long and uncut. Tennis shoes. Loafers. Soap and water the only cosmetic that touched the skin of their weary faces. They carried platters and butcher paper and clay cookware. Wooden serving spoons and bowls lidded with tinfoil. Men unloaded picnic tables from the flatbed of one of the trucks. Carted them off to the grounds behind the church. These men wore short-sleeve dress shirts. White cotton or flannel. Pens or cases for their glasses tucked in the breast pockets. Many walked with a leather-bound copy of the King James Bible. A tethered red ribbon marking some passage or other. One man was much older than the others and he walked with the help of a cane. It was hot that night. Sweat stains spread in wide crescents under their arms. Archaic-looking faces, they might have traveled across time to attend service that evening.

A dumpy man with thinning gray hair opened the hatch on his camper bed. He and another man removed a wooden crate. And another. The crates had hinged lids made of mesh. Whatever was inside them responded to their sudden relocation with a series of dry rattles. Another man approached. Lifted a cardboard box full of fruit jars. With an elbow he shut the hatch to the camper and joined the others.

The women chatted behind the church, unseen, their laughter sounded supernatural. There was an occasional breeze. Clouds trekked before a quarter-full moon. Rain to the west. Someone turned on the exterior lights, simply two flood lamps at either end of the porch. Spiderwebs revealed themselves where the roof met the foundation. Stringy webbing like fishing line, insect wings and legs and leftover parts trembling in the light. The spiders welcomed the 65-watt bulbs like a pulsing dinner bell.

The men hauled the crates inside the church. One man carried a guitar case, followed by a primitive PA system. The older man with thin gray hair paused outside to smoke a cigarette. The others gravitated toward him. A hound trotted excitedly around their feet. Sniffing. Wagging its tail. Its owner patted the dog's head. The subject of coon hunting came up. Led to other topics. Conversation nonlinear. Casual. Bill Elliott raced down in Woodstock. A brother of one of the men from Blairsville suffered from the cancer. But when hands were laid on the afflicted areas he was healed with God's holy fire. When the discussion came back to the subject of God they uttered “amens” in succession. Told stories that had been told before but felt right to tell again.

A truck passed them on the road. To the lone driver it might have appeared as some apocalyptic gathering. A séance. Something equally cultish. The church was one of the few structures with a working roof this high up the mountain. Because the road went on. Higher and higher. To a place where the timber was still king.

The men paid the pickup little attention. Conversation dwindled. They all seemed to know it was time. One by one they ushered themselves inside, the old man with the cane leading the way. The pomade in his hair glistened like grease in a frying pan. The women trailed behind, their work setting up the warming trays and covering the food completed.

An old woman the color of parchment carried a wash pan before her. She wore a handspun dress dyed blue from indigo root. Her face was pruned and shrunken, yet her hazel eyes glowed as if she had just been born. Eyes ready to cry for the first time. She hummed delicately to herself, then opened her mouth to speak. Strange words came out, not quite English, punctuated only by a recognizable “hallelujah.” No one reacted. It seemed expected.

There were two rows of pine pews inside the church. An altar with a podium where the wooden boxes were placed. Fruit jars filled with a honey-colored liquid. A propane tank. A small amplifier. A guitar in its stand. A man fidgeted with a video camera. He looked through the viewfinder, sliding to one corner of the room where a tripod had been set.

The women filed in, patiently following the men.

They followed their husbands or brothers or cousins. When everyone passed under the door frame it was as if the last page of a book had been read.

And a new one begun.

*   *   *

Lang drove up
muddy switchbacks, forced to use his high beams; the twisting snake spine of road revealed numerous slips and ditches. Dirt shoulders. Deteriorating and lacking guardrails. He had a faint recollection as to where he was, a memory of the way, the backbone of the ridge that simply ended and the only way up from there was on foot. In the valley below, the old Dumas line ran out, pockets of abandoned trailers all that remained. Hill people made themselves at home there, squatting, living by their own law. Reaching a point in their lives when no one else wanted them and the feeling was mutual.

Ten years ago you could hear the dogs tearing themselves apart at night. Money exchanging hands. But he had to put a stop to all that shit.

He came upon a downed hickory tree blocking the road. The truck had carried some speed and Lang had to slam on the brakes, causing the back end of the pickup to fishtail into a controlled slide that got his heart rate blast beating. He hadn't been paying attention, an absence he noticed more often, especially when he was driving. His mind dangerously adrift, minutes of his life vanishing with no recollection of where he'd been.