Last Call for the Living (28 page)

Taking fresh notice of the terrible bruise on Charlie's neck, another beside his left eye, Hicklin detected a feeling not unlike sympathy.
Must of looked like hell in that Walmart
. He shrugged it away. Found the bottle of Advil and took three pills followed by a big gulp of water.

“Was my mother in your gang? Was she a Nazi?”

“Fuck no, boy,” he said. “She wanted what poor women like her always wants.”

“What's that?”

“A husband who works. Pays the mortgage. An ironing board. Big ol' television. Homeowners insurance. A decent car and nice dresses. All regular stuff for regular people, least I suppose.”

“You didn't want that?” Charlie said.

“I wanted to make money the quickest way with a gun, and when I went to prison I wanted to make money there, too, and protect my white brothers. You talked about sandpaper for your rocket kits and such. I wanted to
be
the sandpaper. As coarse as it came.”

“You care a lot about being white.”

“It's everything.” Hicklin paused to consider his words. “
Was
everything.”

“Uh-huh. Who made you white?”

“Now don't be startin' this silly shit,” he warned.

“Come on. Who made you white?” Charlie pressed him.

“Reckon God did,” Hicklin said almost inaudibly.

“You believe in God?”

“I do.”

“Even when you were in prison?”

“More so.”

“Why?”

“I knew God was real when I saw the walls and walked the yard of a state penitentiary for the first time. God is just another security system.”

“I'm not a believer,” Charlie said. “I'm an existentialist.”

“A
what
?”

“The universe is a big place and it had to come from somewhere. That question is the one we should ask. But we won't ever have an answer. Our brains hit a wall that's too high to scale. So that's, uh, existentialism?”

Charlie couldn't settle on an answer. It just sounded right to him.

“Well, what about the soul?” Hicklin suggested.

“Don't have one. We're just animals.”

Hicklin stubbed out his cigarette. Turned his attention to the television. But he wasn't done.

“Animals, huh? Then I roamed with the worst of 'em. I lived like one. Focused on nothing but this body of mine. But listen here, I saw more in men's eyes I could deal with sometimes. We weren't just no pride of lions because … more to our lives than kill or be killed.”

“Not the way you've acted so far,” Charlie murmured.

Hicklin's expression soured, eyes opaque and dismissive. He cocked his head awkwardly to one side, as if fighting off a surge of pain. He squinted.

“Sayin' I ain't got no soul?” Hicklin said.

“We're both going to die, and it'll be like we were never born.”

“Know what? Fuck you,” Hicklin said. “I'm tired of listening to you.”

“Fuck you,” Charlie shouted back.

Hicklin looked astonished. His first reaction was anger, but eventually he relaxed, almost to the point of laughing.

“Now where'd
that
come from?” he said to Charlie. “You tell a man to fuck himself, be prepared to back it up.”

“I did back it up. I took on your buddy in the woods. And I cleaned that bullet hole and patched you up,” Charlie said, his bravado sounding tinny. But he didn't look away.

Hicklin nodded thoughtfully.

The kid had shown more concern in the last twelve hours than anyone had Hicklin's entire life.

*   *   *

“So what was
my mother like?”

“Like me I guess,” Hicklin said. “Young. Poor. Naïve. That's the holy trinity of trouble right there.”

“Why did you leave her then? Leave … us?”

A sudden jolt of pain saved Hicklin from answering.

“Go on get us a couple cold ones,” he said with a grunt, trying to raise his arm.

“Are you okay?” There was a great show of great concern on Charlie's face.

But Hicklin shook him off. He took a sip of water and lay back against the headboard, a mountain of pillows supporting him. Eyelids at half-mast, he took on the appearance of a tranquilized grizzly bear.

“You ever play Lowball, Charlie?”

“
Lowball?
Is that some kind of Nazi game?”

“No, Son. It's a game … a game for intellectuals,” Hicklin said, his eyes suddenly twinkling with amusement.

*   *   *

They played cards
into the night, with no real sense of time, like a member of a touring rock band or a gang of long riders. Charlie figured that's exactly what it must be like, running on fumes and loving every minute.

It has been ten days,
he reminded himself.

Felt longer to him, time elongating to the point where his life before the robbery seemed trivial by comparison. He had begun to understand why criminals and vagabonds, restless spirits, wanted to live like this. He thought about his hero, Robert Goddard. Pioneer and father of modern rocketry. Sickly and fragile, hollow chested, braving nor'easters on his parents' front porch. Wrapped in blankets, learning to be ill as if illness was a natural state for his body to be in. Routine as hunger. Knowing that the trauma of perpetual sickliness would result in greatness.

Charlie—thinking of Goddard—hoped, deep down, for a similar transformation.

He sensed it happening like a sputtering fuse to dynamite. Something that would remake his own life.

Or result in madness.

Hicklin studied his cards. He had lost the first couple hands to Charlie on purpose. The impulse struck Hicklin again, to get up and walk out the door. A need to be free and clear. There was nothing to prevent him from bailing. Not even the pain.

Except for Charlie.

Hicklin liked how Charlie didn't gloat or boast of his beginner's luck. Like so many jailhouse poseurs and wannabes. Charlie played cautiously, but he played like a man.

The game of Lowball as Hicklin taught it was a standard version, where the wheel was the lowest possible hand. Ace-to-five low. You ignored the straights and flushes. Hicklin studied Charlie as he drew his cards. Pondered what came naturally to him, finding the lowest, poorest hand.

He told Charlie how Lowball was a game popular with convicts. A challenging game that worked against what most people considered logical.

Hicklin once knew a guy named David Jay, but everyone called him Bad Hat. A big Nazi fuck from Orange County who followed an ex-girlfriend all the way to Powder Springs, Georgia, just to beat the shit out of her with a football helmet. Did a dime for that and similar acts of violence at places like Hancock, where Hicklin met him, before being sent off to Reidsville, where he was never heard from again. Hicklin told Charlie how Bad Hat was the best bluffer he'd ever seen. A great actor like all good criminals.

Charlie nodded. Hicklin couldn't tell if Charlie understood what he was trying to tell him … but at least he was listening.

*   *   *

Hicklin woke up
to debilitating pain. He called out Charlie's name. Gritted his teeth and sat up.

“I can't feel my arm. It's gone numb.”

Charlie turned on the bedside lamp. The motel room was ice-cold. The curtains swayed above the air conditioner's vents.

“You need to see a doctor.”

“It's out of the question.”

“You could see my mother. I could drive us to her house.”

Hicklin considered the alternative. Charlie dumps him at a hospital and he goes back to prison? A place where he'd surely have to face the constant threat of assassination for the rest of his life. Or maybe he ditches Charlie? Stays on the run only to die of infection … or be crippled by nerve damage?

“Do you think she can help me?” Hicklin finally said.

“She's got medicine, antibiotics. She can get that bullet out of you. I just know she can.”

Charlie told him where Lucy Colquitt lived.

Not so far away, Hicklin realized.

*   *   *

You're a stupid
fuck, you know that?

Yeah, I do, Hicklin told himself.

Well, you're just talkin' to yourself anyway. Like some medical in the loony bin. This is a one-way ticket to the laughing factory. Droolin' on yourself ain't far off.

I ain't interested right now.

Look at you. Let Charlie drive you to his mother's house? Are you fucking crazy? The kid looks like a slug begging for salt after a day in the sun. Just coastin' down the highway with your alleged long-lost son. Might as well be goin' to a goddamn Little League game.

Just go away.

I can't figure out for the life of me what the hell happened to you. I really can't.

Maybe I finally grew up.

Grew up? And did what? Decided to rob a bank to commemorate your graduation into adulthood?

I told you, shut up.

You're goddamn forty-one years old. Spent half of it as a resident in the Georgia Penal System. But that stint in the panhandle was nice. Lasted three days in Pensacola before they picked you up. Couldn't get enough, could you? But neither could I. I wanted to go back as bad as you. But as smart as you were, for the life of me I can't figure out why you jumped the goddamn score.

Thought you was better than your brothers, huh? Thought you was smarter? A perfect plan in place. Could of come out with what, sixty? Eighty thousand? And think how much clout you would've earned. Boys out west would've been singin' your praises. Hell, they already were! You were in the perfect spot. Six months from now you would've been phased in somewhere. Run a crew. Oakland. Nashville. Phoenix. Denver. A lead soldier on the streets. Know those Arizona cats made 'bout twenty million pure profit just distributin' meth.

Of course you knew that. You're me.

But no, you had one of your damn impulses, huh? Wanna move out to Montana with one big chunk of money that ain't yours to begin with? Start fresh and settle down? I swear it's that damn Jubilation County. Somethin' in the goddamn water. Just breeds foolishness. And just when I thought I had you under control. We was workin' so good together.

Thought a guy like Lipscomb wouldn't find you, but he did and then you wronged him.

You should be in an orange GDC jumpsuit pickin' up cans off I-20. Should have just stayed in prison. It wouldn't have been hard to do. But you and Preacher hit the streets round the same time. And he offered you a sweet deal. The score set up out west. Safe houses, transpo, guns, intel. Another score three months down the road. And you fucked it up!

But then you take ol' Coma here hostage, too. Like you needed a buddy or somethin'. Already convinced yourself he's your own flesh and blood. Ever stop to consider maybe he isn't, you stupid sumbitch? Did you ever consider the pure coincidence of it all?

What are you gonna do? Send the kid to Harvard? Catch up over beers and a couple Westerns? Gonna bond over a viewing of
Shane
? You lost that battle long ago.

I wish you would just finally go to hell.

Tell that kid to keep it under seventy. And no, this person inside you, this extra goddamn gear, ain't going nowhere.

Maybe the kid is right. Ain't no soul. You're just the sum of chemicals interacting.

Oh, just go on thinkin' that. Who kept you alive when you got out of Segregation? Who built you into something fierce? They knew your name from Sandersville to Rome. Hell, you know they talked about you at San Quentin. Pelican Bay. Marion. They knew of you. That Hicklin cat, he's smart and lean. Last of the Georgia Boys. The real deal. Big badass cowboy.

And why? Because of me. I cut you from wood.

Most people wish they had a voice like me.

When they threw you in that open bay tent unit, who saved you? In the recreation hall when that big Salvadoran nigger wanted to fuck you sideways. Who bowed up and showed everyone that you were hard and the last to be fucked with? Who tore out his fucking tongue? Who does that? You could have been a lot of things in life. But the last thing you are is a daddy.

Just stop. I got to concentrate.

What's a matter? In a little bit of pain?

You know it.

How about ol' Lucy? I'm sure this reunion will be right nice and emotional. Now you think this Charlie belongs to you? God knows how many men that woman might've fucked. I remember the letter you got from her. Committed to your fucking memory. Told you to flush it down the toilet. I had a son and I think it's yours, but you're no good so wah, wah, wah.… You might have ten kids for all we know. Want to go pick them up, too? You're making a huge mistake, but we can fix this. First you off the kid. Boost another car and head west as fast as you can. It's a risk, but we got friends in Muscle Shoals.

No.

This morning they'll no doubt have you and Preacher and Flock's face on the news. Statewide manhunt. Wasn't like you stumbled on that bank on your way for a morning cup of coffee. Someone sold you the guns and someone inside laid out the floor plans and security cameras and delivery schedule and where the cash lockers was and all the weak spots in that podunk bank. Plus think if they pinch Cueva and you get the Mexian Mafia involved? Holy shit! Pray you've practiced breathing through a gaping hole in your throat. It won't take the law much longer. They crossing t's and dotting the i's as we speak. Let's not forget you pulled a Wild Bunch inside a goddamn church, killed a cop probably. But I can't blame you for that move. I was the one in charge then. Like the good ol' days. Now I'm just some second-class citizen. And don't think those fine men max-locked in concrete shoe boxes out Florence way don't know. They might have twenty or fifty plans in various stages of design. Heists. Hits. Kidnappings. So they know. White nigger in Jubilation County fucked it up. Smell the blood from here.