Michael Lister - Soldier 02 - The Big Beyond (13 page)

Chapter 34

A
nd ten minutes later, he did.

He was in shock from the trauma he had suffered and weak from the loss of blood, but he managed to take us to the spot, continuing to act defiant and undefeated all the way.

I had noticed a shovel in the trunk of the Packard when we had pulled Walt out the first time, and wondered why it was there. Clip had to know I wasn’t going to kill Walt and bury him in the woods.

As he opened the trunk and removed it, I asked, “Why’d you bring that?”

“Didn’t. This his car,” he said, nodding toward Walt as he stumbled toward the huge oak they were buried beneath. “Hell, this probably the shovel he used to bury them with.”

We followed Walt over to the spot, walking slowly as he hobbled along in front of us.

“Soon as I show you, I want a goddamn doctor.”

He led us to a patch of dirt not far from the tree, then collapsed onto the ground.

Clip started digging.

“I doin’ this ’cause your ass got one arm and you can’t dig for shit, not ’cause I your butler.”

“Nobody would ever think otherwise.”

It didn’t take him long to hit something solid, and in a while the upper half of three bodies were mostly exposed.

Serious decay had started and much of their skin was already missing, but there was enough to tell they were the bodies of Frank Howell, Payton Rainer, and Ann Everett.

“Still don’t see why you killed them,” I said.

“You don’t see anything. That’s what I keep telling you. Doesn’t matter. You’ll be dead soon. Then you’ll have plenty of time to work it out in hell.”

“If that’s true, what’s the harm in telling me what I’m not seeing?”

“I ain’t sayin’ shit else. Now get me to a goddamn doctor.”

“What
are
we gonna do with him?” Clip asked.

“Can’t turn him in,” I said. “Can’t have him telling them about Lauren.”

“Only leave one option.”

“I know.”

“I’ll do it,” he said, starting to withdraw his weapon.

I shook my head. “No. My decision. I’ve got to be the one to do it.”

He looked at me for a long moment, his eye studying me intently. “You sure?”

I nodded slowly. “He killed her.”

I had been thinking about this since the moment he had threatened to do damage to Lauren, and no matter which way I turned it, which way I approached it, it all came back to the same thing. Cliff Walton couldn’t be allowed to live. And it wasn’t just because of what he’d reveal to everyone about Lauren now, but that he was a big part of the reason she was dead. I couldn’t turn him in. I couldn’t let him go. That left only one thing to do, but could I do it?

I had killed before—not many times, but enough that I knew what it was like, the toll it took, the cost it exacted, the residual effects in the mind, the karmic ripples on the soul. But I had never executed a man before, never killed in cold blood. Could I do it? And having done it, could I live with it? The former was the real question because the latter was made moot by the fact that I wouldn’t have to live with it long.

“Use his gun,” Clip said, handing it to me. “Then we wipe it down and drop it in the hole with him and the others.”

As I took the gun I thought I should have Clip shoot me and put me in the same hole. After all, I was as guilty as the rest of them, just as responsible for Lauren’s death—more so, actually. If I weren’t a dead man walking, I would—or hoped I would. Maybe I’d live long enough to find out what happened to Pete and who’s killing the young girls and to find out if there’s anything to what Walt’s been saying, but couldn’t imagine it’d be much longer than that.

I walked over to Walt.

He was slumped over as if already dead, his bloody arms and legs dangling limply, his blood and sweat-soaked hair glistening in the headlights from his car.

“Did you kill the priest?” I asked.

He looked up slowly, his weak eyes barely open.

“Not intentionally. Was aiming for you.”

“I’m going to kill you now and toss your body in the same hole with your coconspirators and victims.”

He tried to laugh, but nothing much came out. “No you’re not, Mr. leg shooter … and arm … Mr. leg and arm shooter.”

There was a slight slur to his words, and it was taking him a long time to get them out.

“I’m not doing it because you killed the priest or those twisted bastards in the hole. I’m going to punch your ticket for what you did to Lauren. That’s it. Understand?”

“Go fuck yourself.”

He was growing more pathetic by the moment.

Clip appeared beside me. “He be dead soon. Just wait a while and you won’t have to do it.”

“But I do. I have to do it.”

He nodded.

Stepping forward and thumbing back the hammer of his own weapon, I placed it between his eyes.

“Let me live and I’ll tell you what’s coming, what’s going to happen to you. And I won’t tell anyone about the … ah, Mrs. Lewis. I swear it.”

“You wanna say a prayer, now’s the time.”

He shook his head.

“Anything else you want to say to us?”

“Just how goddamn glad I am you’re gonna get what’s comin’ to you.”

I started to pull the trigger, but couldn’t.

“Let me live. Get a doctor to patch me up. I’ll tell you everything. I know things you need to know. I’ll tell you what really happened to her.”

“Who?”

“You know who. Don’t shoot me. Get me some help and I’ll tell you.”

“Last chance. Tell me now.”

“You’re not gonna do it. You can’t.”

He was right. I tried again, and just couldn’t do it. I squeezed the trigger, but only to a point, then released it again.

Snippets of Lauren’s letter came then. Unbidden, but never unwelcome.

Our love, mine for you and yours for me, has forever changed me. And though it is us, from us, a part of us, it also is beyond us. Through you I’ve experienced a love that I can only describe as divine.

Please know how very deeply I love you. Please don’t ever stop loving me that same way.

We’ll have eternity.

All my love, all of me,

Your Lauren

I thought about how much Lauren wouldn’t want me to do this, how she would plead with me for my sake, not his, but then I pictured her in the ground, her precious flesh that used to press against mine, that smooth, sweet-smelling skin that I kissed and caressed so often, now rotting off her like that of her disfigured killers in the opening in the earth behind me, and I squeezed the trigger, the loud rapport echoing through the quiet woods and through the emptiness in the center of my soul.

Chapter 35

I
t was Thanksgiving.

I wasn’t thankful. I was depressed.

I had had too much to drink the night before when I had come in from killing Walt. Actually, there was something to be thankful for. I was thankful that Frank Howell, Payton Rainer, Ann Everett, and Cliff Walton were dead.

I was hung over and hungry.

But mostly I was numb. I felt little of anything except a certain satisfaction at having put Walt in the ground.

In those moments when I wasn’t completely numb, I felt lonely. I was as alone and isolated as I had ever been—and that was saying something.

I missed Lauren. I always missed Lauren. Her absence was both a constant dull ache and a continuous sharp pain. But I also missed July and even Ray and Ruth Ann, my old drinking pal. As it was, she wasn’t Lauren and she wasn’t herself, and I don’t think she realized just how much I missed her, how what she was doing left me with no one.

The president had made a proclamation for Thanksgiving back on the eleventh that the paper reran today.

Proclamation 2600 - Thanksgiving Day, 1943
November 11, 1943
By the President of the United States of America
A Proclamation

God’s help to us has been great in this year of march toward world-wide liberty. In brotherhood with warriors of other United Nations our gallant men have won victories, have freed our homes from fear, have made tyranny tremble, and have laid the foundation for freedom of life in a world which will be free.

Our forges and hearths and mills have wrought well; and our weapons have not failed. Our farmers, victory gardeners, and crop volunteers have gathered and stored a heavy harvest in the barns and bins and cellars. Our total food production for the year is the greatest in the annals of our country.
For all these things we are devoutly thankful, knowing also that so great mercies exact from us the greatest measure of sacrifice and service.

Now, therefore, I, Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States of America, do hereby designate Thursday, November 25, 1943, as a day for expressing our thanks to God for His blessings. November having been set aside as “Food Fights for Freedom” month, it is fitting that Thanksgiving Day be made the culmination of the observance of the month by a high resolve on the part of all to produce and save food and to “share and play square” with food.

May we on Thanksgiving Day and on every day express our gratitude and zealously devote ourselves to our duties as individuals and as a nation. May each of us dedicate his utmost efforts to speeding the victory which will bring new opportunities for peace and brotherhood among men.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States of America to be affixed.

DONE at the City of Washington this 11th day of November, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and forty-three, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and sixty-eighth.

FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT

“Y
ou okay?” Ruth Ann asked.

I nodded, but knew there was no way it was convincing.

“What is it?”

I had just finished showering and dressing, and was about to take some aspirin and head back out to De Grasse’s place.

I was moving very slowly.

“What is it?” she asked again.

“Rough day,” I said.

“Oh yeah? How long’s it been since you had one that wasn’t?”

“Been a while.”

She pulled out one of the chairs from the small dining table.

“Sit down. Let me feed you and get you fixed up,” she said. “Don’t have much of a traditional meal, but I have—”

“I’m fine. I’ve got to get back over to—”

“Sit down,” she said. “I’ll be quick.”

I sat down.

She brought in a bowl of warm water, a washcloth, and her medical kit and set them on the table beside me.

“Just relax,” she said.

She still looked like Lauren—all but the eyes—and her ministrations moved me deeply. After all the hardness and horror and violence and death of the past few days, her tender touch was nearly too much, and I could feel myself melting into it.

Unbuttoning my shirt, she pulled up my undershirt and examined my wounds.

“Take a deep breath and let it out slowly,” she said. “Now another. Just relax. Let everything go. Breathe out all the badness. Breathe in love and peace and goodness. That’s it.” She paused. “Why’d you want your medical records?” she asked.

“Huh?”

“Sorry. We can talk about it later.”

“No. Now is good. What did they treat me for in Tallahassee?”

“Gunshot. Why?”

“That’s all?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Why am I not sick?”

“Whatta you mean?”

“I should be sicker. I’m dying, right? Why am I not—”

“Of what? No you’re not dying. Oh. I see. You thought she gave you—”

“I gave it to her.”

The night I had left town with Lauren, I had discovered that she was dying, that Howell and Rainer and Everett and Walt were blackmailing her into getting Harry to drop out of the race.

I could still remember every second of the moment I discovered the truth.

I had broken into Ann Everett’s house on Cherry Street and found a large envelope in a hidden compartment in the base of an ornate grandfather clock.

My heart had started racing as I opened it.

Lauren’s medical records and detailed notes were inside.

The first word the beam of my flashlight had fallen on was a dirty word, the kind that led to blackmail, ended political aspirations, and took lives. Few words were as powerful or as deadly.

It explained Lauren’s behavior, her episodes, everything.

Lauren had a disease with virtually no early sign of infection. She had a small, non-painful nodule or lesion, which she had ignored. It had gone away in just a few weeks. But untreated, her disease had progressed to the next stage.

As her lesion was going away, she got a reddish-brown rash on the palms of her hands and the soles of her feet. For a while, she had a fever, swollen glands, a sore throat, weight loss, headaches, and fatigue. Again, it was left untreated, and again, it progressed. As her rash began to disappear, the infection was still in her body, but there were very few symptoms and no outward signs of the disease, and all the while it was damaging her brain, heart, liver, eyes, bones, and joints.

Lauren had put off going to the doctor for as long as she could—perhaps because of how busy she was with the campaign or maybe because she suspected what it was. When she couldn’t delay any longer, she trusted Ann Everett’s recommendation of Payton Rainer, who administered a blood test called the Wasserman. But instead of treating her with the arsenic preparation and sulfa-like drug known as Salvarsan 606, he began to blackmail her—not for money, but to remove her husband from the mayoral race.

And Lauren couldn’t go anywhere else for treatment.

She had syphilis.

I thought Margie had given it to me and I had given it to her. I truly thought there could be no other explanation. It’s what made me even more guilty than Walt and Rainer and the rest.

“No, you didn’t,” Ruth Ann was saying. “After I saw her records, I was concerned she may have given it to you, but I gave you the Wasserman. You’re clean.”

“I’m … what? What are you saying? It can’t be … I can’t be—”

“You are. All this time you thought you gave it to her? You poor man.”

I sat there in stunned silence, more in shock than Walt had been after having been shot in his legs and arms.

That thought brought back the pathetic image of Walt slumped on the ground, blood oozing from the gash in his face and through the holes in his clothes.

“You’re sure?” I asked.

“Absolutely positive.”

“So Margie didn’t have it,” I said, still reeling, trying to understand, my mind searching for something to moor to.

“Guess not. Or if she did, she didn’t give it to you.”

I thought about that, feeling guilty for all the hateful, horrible things I had thought about Margie.

“Is it sinking in, soldier?” she asked. “You didn’t give it to her.”

“It’s starting to,” I said. “But if I didn’t, then who the hell did?”