Last Call for the Living (23 page)

Sieg Heil!

Sieg Heil!

Sieg Heil!

Many times their nine-by-five cell was the only place much of it made any sense.

Hicklin conjured up a mental photograph of the basketball courts, him and Lipscomb taking turns on the pull-up bars, AB muscle keeping watch. They
could
have been father and son. There had been a power between them, a power to control and define the politics of prison yards.

They prowled. They pranced. They stalked. It was a ruthless form of theater.

Lipscomb used to say that
they
were the forgotten.
No more mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters. Only the Brand mattered.

Those memories of family and friends, a normal life on the outside, with its freedoms and rights and luxuries, had been erased.

And that's exactly how they preferred it.

*   *   *

Charlie tripped and
fell to his knees. He was panting. Hicklin stopped to help him up.

“Son, I'm about tired of this shit,” Lipscomb said. “I was curious how it might play out, but I ain't so curious no more. Tell me where we heading or I'm just going to drop y'all right there in that water.”

Hicklin raised a hand to the light, to the shadow that held it.

“It's close,” he pleaded. “Upstream.”

Lipscomb turned the flashlight on Charlie, then back on Hicklin. They appeared pale and featureless, like faces lifted from the knotted trunks of trees.

“I believe there's an old hunting cabin over that way,” he said, a vague awareness flickering behind his eyes.

*   *   *

The trees grew
bunched like arrows in a quiver. Charlie's breathing intensified. Hicklin put a hand on the back of Charlie's neck, feeling a fever heat, the skin slick with sweat. He thought the boy was on the verge of collapse. When he doubled over and began to heave, Hicklin patted him on the back, rubbing his shoulders in some strange, paternal way. An exasperated voice called from the shadows.

“Okay, I think I've had all I can take of this here bullshit.…”

Hicklin turned to Lipscomb and the tactical light, hoping to placate him with news of their proximity to the cash, when they both heard the click of the .357's hammer. Lipscomb cocked his head curiously.

Hicklin closed his eyes. Prepared to die.

Then he was yanked off his feet.

Charlie had sprung to life, like a linebacker charging a tackling dummy. Even more surprising was when he produced Flock's snub nose and fired wildly at Lipscomb. Lipscomb ducked his head, throwing up his arms in surprise. He lost his grip on the tactical light and an eerie backlit shadow fell over them all. Still charging, Charlie fired again, grazing Lipscomb's shoulder. The charge knocked him backwards, the shotgun slipping by its sling off his shoulder. He scurried up the slope, reeling, already drawing the .45.

Charlie squeezed the trigger in succession, exhausting the wheel in less than ten seconds, dry-firing as if he thought the weapon would reload itself. It was random, panicked shooting that scared his target more than harmed him, Hicklin trying to gain an advantage but stumbling, yanked by Charlie to the ground. Lipscomb returned fire, narrowly missing them both. The sloppy, close-quarter firefight illuminated their mad scramble up the hill and the difficult footing to be had on a slope of pine straw and leaf marl.

Lipscomb fired twice more, the muzzle flash providing a brilliant strobe, enough light to glimpse Hicklin and Charlie lunging toward him. He backpedaled blindly, tripping on the rot of a downed poplar. Before Lipscomb could fire again Hicklin caught him by the wrist. He yanked and twisted, liberating the HK, but Lipscomb proved too strong. They wrestled for a moment, all grimace and wet, chunky breaths—Charlie an accessory—the two old friends writhing like soldiers locked in a game of hand-to-hand.

Lipscomb managed some separation, stunning Hicklin with a kick to the kneecap. He collapsed instantly, snagging Charlie off-balance, eyes searching the forest floor for the .45.

Lipscomb stomped backwards through a mess of leaves and brush, reaching under his shirt for a stainless-steel Ruger he had tucked in a spine holster. He raised the revolver with a clear shot of Hicklin when his leg fell into a depression. His boot tripping a circular paddle.

The sound they heard was a swift, mechanical attack. The bones in Lipscomb's left leg snapped like a broomstick over an angry knee.

He groaned through gritted teeth, firing the Ruger once up into the canopy. He fell sideways, dropping the pistol.

And reached for the bear trap with both hands.

*   *   *

Lang left Hicklin's
truck and followed the winding path, not sure where it would lead him. Twenty minutes later Lang came upon a large opening, a ghost road he recognized as the one he'd driven up. He turned left and started to walk, breathing a sigh of relief at the sight of his Nissan up ahead. He'd already tried to call Crews on his cell phone, even text her the license plate number of the Chevy, but there was no signal.

The reports from a barrage of gunshots struck his ears like a crack of thunder. A few moments passed. A fifth and sixth shot from a large-caliber handgun. It was close by, closer than he expected. His trot turned to a sprint. When he got to his pickup he turned and looked up at the wall of trees. Another gunshot—the last—rang out.

He holstered his Kimber in the steering column mount and cranked the truck, wheeling it into a quick three-point turn. With only his running lights on, Lang drove back down the mountain road. Panting like a greyhound. Wondering what those animals might be doing to themselves up in those woods.

*   *   *

The underside of
the trap's jaws clamped on Lipscomb's left leg below the knee, pinching its girth to the width of a beer bottle. The teeth of the trap were enormous, like those of an alligator. Heavy cast iron. Tempered steel springs. A chain disappeared under a blanket of leaf decay, the ring holding the trap in place pinned down deep into the earth.

The sudden pain had punched the air from his lungs. Face depleted, he squinted, studying his leg in disbelief, his upper body rocking in a kind of halfhearted sit-up. Grinding his teeth as if being eaten alive.

Hicklin promptly picked up the tac light and searched for the .38 on the ground, finding it just half a foot from Lipscomb's reach. He played the beam across his old friend's leg, Lipscomb choking a scream off at the sight of his knee. He turned a pale face toward the light, to Hicklin standing over him with the Ruger. Charlie had scooped up the shotgun and was at his side, holding the Mossberg with shaky hands like a caricature of some rural guerilla.

“Keys?” Hicklin said.

Lipscomb wrenched his eyes back and forth between them, a pained look masking the animal ready to fight to its death. He reached in a breast pocket and handed Hicklin the keys to the handcuffs. Lipscomb raised his hands submissively, palms up, every twitch of muscle fiber causing him to wince and strain. Hicklin steadied the revolver, his eyes veiled.

“You win,” Lipscomb said. “Just take me to a hospital … you can just push me out the door. I don't care. Just don't leave me like this! I won't say nothin' to nobody! I swear it!”

Lipscomb's begging came like a poison chaser. Even with a leg one tug from coming clean off, Hicklin knew Lipscomb could talk his way through anything. A savvy pitch was coming.

You help him and see. He'll roll on you in a heartbeat.

Unless there was a bullet in his head.

Hicklin looked around, dancing the tac light off tree trunks and thick nothingness. As if he half-expected to see a bystander frantically dialing the authorities.

*   *   *

Kill him.

Maybe.

Then what are my options?

*   *   *

Despite the protests,
Hicklin pressed a muddied boot to Lipscomb's thigh, digging the muzzle of the .38 against his uninjured kneecap.

This is worse than any death.…

Charlie looked away.

Hicklin pulled the trigger.

 

Breathe in the fire, breathe in the fire.

God hates a liar on a Palm Sunday.

Stick in the knife, stick in the knife.

God hates a coward on a Palm Sunday.

 

ELEVEN

A woman shook
a tambourine, accenting the trebly rhythms of the guitar player. The audience was transfixed. The small church proceedings now a hot, sweat-soaked ordeal. The air smelled of camphor and steam. Witness after witness took the pulpit. Some men rubbed the tops of the wooden boxes with the palms of their hands. Yet the boxes remained closed for now.

An improvised hymn was sung, the tune turning grim and erratic. The voices of the congregation meshed and then disconnected. The guitar player carefully selected each note with fingers that strained to find them.

A man took the stage. He flicked his wrists at the audience, then toward the ceiling. He clapped.

Brother Rollins is right, down to the core!

We all grew antlers that almost cost us our jobs!

“But the job is here and now!”

The faithful joined in a concussion of “amens.” An ecstasy spread down the aisles. Hands raised, some of the women opened their mouths and spoke in tongues. Without any warning or apparent plan the man at the pulpit knelt down.

And opened the lid of the first box.

He lifted a three-foot canebrake rattler from its depths, holding the snake high above his head. It slithered between his fingers and around his wrist and down a forearm. He reached in with his spare hand and pulled out a smaller rattlesnake.

Seven or eight more congregants had stepped forward by now. The tambourine and guitar accompanied the procession, locking into a hypnotic rhythm. Another man reached into the box, his right hand emerging with a four-foot timber rattler. The reptile's broad triangular head sliding between his thumb and forefinger, licking at the air with flicks of its tongue. Dark crossbands the length of the snake's body were oily and smooth looking in the light.

The man lowered his hand to waist length. The snake turned curiously up toward his shoulder with no obvious intentions. He spoke of being breast-fed from a dirty dog until the one true God took his lips away and set them right.

The man ran a thumb along the brown stripe behind each eye of the snake. The rattler held itself steady as if trying to reciprocate the tenderness of the moment.

More men and women took the stage, opening the remaining wooden crates while others started to dance in the aisle. They shuffled back and forth with peculiar hopping motions. Palms upturned. Wild-eyed, their mouths moving to the revelry. A woman pulled two copperheads from one of the serpent boxes. She dropped one and reached down to pick it up. Handed it to another woman. Like clowns from a car at a circus, the snakes were pulled continuously from the boxes. Twined and twisting. Thick as handfuls of drained pasta.

They prayed and passed the snakes along. One of the women opened a mason jar and took a sip of the strychnine-water mixture. She passed it to a man who was cradling a canebrake rattler as you would a puppy. He took three large gulps from the jar and passed it on.…

… Hallelujah, there is no throne like God's throne.…

One of the believers had lit the rag wick of a glass jar filled with kerosene.

He passed a finger and then a fist and then a wrist over the flame in slow, measured movements.

The room filled with the hysteria of the spirit, the Holy Ghost coming down on its supplicants in waves of tornadic power. The plank floor quaked a little underfoot like some divine tremor.

The snakes writhed. They slipped through the fingers of the devout.

Studying their handlers like you would the occupants of an asylum.

Or an emergency room.

*   *   *

Hicklin and Charlie
ran through the woods, barreling behind the scattered beam of the tactical light.

They crossed the creek and climbed the limestone bank. Eventually the trees gave way to shrubs and grass. The grove appeared under a faint detail of moonlight. Charlie tried to keep up but struggled to get his wind back. He watched as Hicklin made for the hemlock that marked the old stone lodging. He disappeared from view for a moment when he reached inside the stove and pulled out the duffel bag. He took off at a dead run but soon stopped.

Hicklin turned to look back at Charlie. The boy stood frozen in place, hands on his knees, his expression a mixture of dejection and fatigue. Hicklin favored him with a soft smile. Realizing himself what was occurring between them.

Charlie was joining him in whatever happened next. Willingly. As if there were no choice now, no words to speak, no deliberations. But as they stood in the grove, the rain clouds having parted to allow a clear view of the night sky, Charlie realized for better or for worse he cared about his captor.

Hicklin's smile turned to a hardened scowl. He nodded.

But there was meaning to be found in his eyes.

*   *   *

They backtracked, finding
the Chevy step-side after two wrong turns. Hicklin intuited that the tarp had been disturbed. It troubled him, but there wasn't time to fret. He rolled up the tarp, covered the shotgun with it behind the front seats. He stuck the key in the ignition. Gave Charlie some instructions and climbed out. Charlie slid over and tapped the brake with his left foot. Flicked the turn signals.

Tail- and brake lights worked.