PIKE (21 page)

“It’s a good move.”

“Think you could wait two weeks?”

Pike looks at him.

“I didn’t figure.” Jack sticks his hands in his pockets and turns his face up at the night. “They’ll probably kill you.”

“Probably.”

“Well. That’s your business.” Jack exhales a steady stream of frost at the sky. “I’m going home. To bed. If you’re still alive when I wake up, don’t let me see you in town again. Ever.”

“Done.”

Pike shifts the truck into gear, drives away.

He used to have to summon up every demon he could muster. His ex, his daughter, every wife-beating junky he ever knew. He was a machine that ran on cocaine and self-hatred. But he doesn’t need to work himself up tonight. There are a million reasons to kill Derrick, but none of them matters. Pike’s heart is huge and meaty in his chest. He feels it harnessing his blood, mastering it the way you’d master a wild horse. He wheels his truck to a stop in the gravel lot of the Green Frog Café, checking the .357 in his shoulder holster. Then he steps out of the truck and pulls his 30-30 lever-action rifle from behind the seat.

L
eroy’s behind the bar, washing a glass, the light under the bar registering a roughneck nobility to his broken nose and jagged jawline. Pike kicks the steel door straight back off its hinges and centers the 30-30’s front sight on Leroy’s forehead. “Don’t.”

Leroy does, his hand bolting under the counter. Pike pulls the trigger, blasts his face into a red vapor, the air molecules in the room bursting with the deafening gun blast. Leroy’s body folds to the floor, all but headless. Pike levers a new round into the action. Twin retards, Jessie and Jesse, sitting at one of the tables, holding cards. Cotton looking up at him from the pool table at the end of the bar. No Derrick. The twins move fast, tipping up the table, doing their best to hunch behind it. Cotton moves faster, scuttling behind the bar.

Jesse and Jessie first. Pike ducks sideways against the bar, fires a 30-30 round through their table, levers, fires again. The table’s thin, Pike hears the rounds smack flesh. A hand pops over the table, raps off three quick shots with a .25 pocket-pistol. None even close. Pike puts another 30-30 round through the table. Jesse falls sideways, Pike puts a bullet in his head.

A thin high screech. Jessie jumps from behind the table, runs at Pike. His hands out-stretched like to strangle him. Pike shoots him the neck, levers, shoots him again center-mass. Doesn’t even slow him. Pike drops the empty 30-30, unholsters the .357, fires three rounds into his chest from three feet away. Jessie falls over him, his hands still senselessly groping.

Then a boom. Then a burning in his left arm. Pike catapults over Jessie’s body, puts it between himself and the bar. Cotton pumps the 12-gauge, fires again through the bar, the pellets smacking into

Jessie’s body. They ain’t yet made the shotgun load that can penetrate a three-hundred-pound Kentucky redneck, though. Pike checks his arm. Three or four pellets in the tricep, probably 3 buck. Nothing.

“I count you got three rounds left,” Cotton calls from behind the bar, his voice even and languid, muffled by the ringing in Pike’s ears.

“I count the same for you,” Pike returns. He’s laying flat against Jessie’s side, Jessie’s left arm flapped out above his head, his blood puddling up, lapping against him.

“Might have a whole box of shells back here. You never know.”

“Might have a pocketful, myself,” Pike says. He blinks, his eyes burning with sweat and cordite.

“Looks like we got a stand-off, outlaw.”

“Looks like it.”

“I don’t believe I ever done anything to you,” Cotton says. “I even liked the kid.”

“You knew exactly what Derrick was. You put him up.”

“Well. He and I have been friends a long time.”

“Sure you have.” Pike thumbs open the wheel on the .357, reloads it from his pocket. Then scans the floor, doesn’t see the 30-30. Must be on the other side of the body.

“You done any thinking on how you’re fixing to get out of this?” Cotton says. “Even if you manage to kill me, you’re sure to be suspect number one.”

“Don’t worry about me managing to kill you.”

“And don’t forget about that little girl. I make a lot of people money. None of them are gonna be happy to see me dead. Revenge killings always seem to spiral that way.”

“This ain’t a revenge killing,” Pike says. “This is a drug deal gone wrong. What do you think the cops’ll find when they search this place?”

“Jack’ll know better.”

“Jack won’t give a shit.” Pike puts his left toe to the heel of his right cowboy boot, slowly works his foot out.

“Maybe not. But it won’t be him alone. You’re after Derrick, I’m betting. Cincinnati PD won’t take that lying down. They’ll come down on this town like a hammer.”

“Derrick’s crooked. If they investigate too hard they might suck in half the force.” Pike’s got the right boot off, starts working on the left. “You ain’t never gonna lose money counting on crooked cops.”

“Fair enough. But you still gotta get past me.”

“Sure. But first I’m gonna wait for your buddy to get back. To step into that foyer yonder with the one-way glass. First I’m gonna put him down like a fucking dog. Then I’ll hop this bar and put a bullet in you.”

“Have it your own way. Got any cigarettes, while we wait?”

Pike fingers a Pall Mall out of his coat pocket and lobs it over the bar. “You get it?”

“I got it.”

“Need a light?”

“Got my own.”

Pike hears the snick of Cotton’s lighter. He slips another cigarette out of his pack and lights it. Then sticks the lit cigarette in Jesse’s hand and scoots, as flat as he can, out past Jessie’s feet. He swings himself to his feet and pads around the bar.

Cotton’s empty boots, a smoking cigarette stuck planted in a shot glass. Cotton down at the other end of the bar, climbing over it barefoot, his back to Pike. Pike cocks the .357. “Looks like we had the same idea,” he says.

“Shit,” Cotton says. “Well. It was a good one.”

“Lay down the shotgun and come on down here.”

Cotton does. Sheepishly. “You’re gonna ask me where Derrick is, ain’t you?”

Pike nods. “Walk over by the pool table.”

“Probably wouldn’t believe me if I said I didn’t know, would you?”

“Probably not,” Pike says. “Wanna finish your cigarette?”

“I’m all right.”

Pike squeezes the trigger. The room explodes with the boom and Cotton crashes sideways on the floor, his face wild, his hands clutching at the smoking mess that was his left foot. “Stand up,” Pike says, his grin as tight as a child-sized coffin.

Cotton huffs air. The bones of his face straining against the skin like it’s an elastic mask. He reaches down to his good leg, pulls himselfup. He bites a hole all the way through his lip with the effort, a long rivulet of blood dripping from his chin, spattering on the floorboards.

“Walk to the wall and back again.”

Cotton does, slathering for air, blowing saliva bubbles, seeming to move by will alone. The shattered bones in his foot scraping the floorboards like fingernails.

“We’ll keep on doing laps until you’re ready to tell me where Derrick is,” Pike says. “If it takes more than three, we’ll try it with both your feet blown off.”

It takes two.

T
he snow came out of nowhere. Starting light, a flutter of movement crossing the mountains, but now driving through the pass, swirling out in the blackness over the valley. Derrick’s spent the last two hours up on Devil’s Elbow, sitting in his car with the engine idling, watching the town lights slowly wink out behind the snow-white mask, the darkness. His last night in Nanticonte. He’d meant to say good bye to Cotton, but he didn’t. Just told him he needed to sit and think awhile, that he’d back soon. He opens another beer, lights another cigarette.

No sleep. Again. Making up your mind doesn’t buy rest. There are no decisions that don’t lead to new ones, that don’t branch out to others, that don’t multiply until they consume your life. Derrick watches the swirling snow. For a long time. Then he stuffs the cigarette butt in his empty beer can, drops it on the floorboard, and opens the car door.

The wind needles his face when he steps out, tearing at his nose. Derrick walks to the edge of the drop-off, stands with his knees against the guard rail. He unzips his pants, pisses an insignificant arc out into the void, zips his pants. He stands for awhile, staring out at the blankness that’s taken the place of his home town. Then turns back to his car.

Something punches Derrick in the stomach, a rifle’s crack barely audible in the howling wind. It takes Derrick a second or two to make the connection. Then he looks down, sees the hole in his stomach. His knees already sagging, his body a weight beyond his control. He sinks to the ground like a man sinking underwater, reaching for his .45. He can’t hold it up. His hand falls on his leg.

Shadows in the snow. Then one shadow detaching from the others, flitting dimly across the expanse. At first indistinct, then taking a human form. Then more than human, stalking towards him, great and shaggy, appearing out of the snow like some kind of elemental the storm’s discharging into the world. Then slowly diminishing in size, taking again the shape of a man. Then Pike bends over and takes his .45 out of his hand.

“This is gonna hurt like hell, ain’t it?” Derrick says.

Pike hunkers down next to him, holding his father’s rifle. “We’ll wait for it together.”

Derrick nods. Or tries to. There’s a pulsing in his ears. Less a sound than a feeling, like the bullet is pounding around his chest cavity in some strangely familiar rhythm. “You know the hell of it?”

“What’s that?”

“I was leaving tonight. Heading back to Cincinnati.”

Pike runs his hand over the stock of his rifle, looking at it. “It wouldn’t have mattered.”

The pulse grows, keeps growing. Deafens Derrick so that he can’t answer. Then he grins, recognizing it. His heartbeat. He listens to it for a long time. Pike watches over him. Derrick starts counting seconds between the beats. He grins again. “It’s pacing down.”

Pike lights a cigarette. “What is?”

Derrick holds his shaking hand up for Pike to be silent and listens some more.

Then the pain hits him in a monstrous nauseating wave. Derrick’s hand drops, he feels the blood drain out of face, he can’t hear his heartbeat at all anymore. “Jesus.”

“That it?” Pike asks, blowing smoke.

“I think so,” Derrick grunts. “Can we talk about something?”

Pike nods, stubbing the cigarette out in the snow. “Talk to me about my daughter.”

So he does. Until he can’t anymore.

P
ike drives the backroads all through the night. And then drives through the next day. First through Tennessee, then through Arkansas, until he can barely take anymore. These rolling hills with a slave quarters out back of every farmhouse, where you can’t take two steps without grinding an Indian arrowhead under your boot. And not a small town to drive through that he can bring himself to stop in.

But then the land starts to clear. And then it is clear. And finally he’s on the West Texas plains. The road opening through the tallgrass like a black flag unfurling in the wind, the sunlight spilling over the truck like a warm wash of water. He lights a cigarette and cracks the window. The desert air circles through the cab of the truck, dry and clean. It breaks over Pike’s face like a stream breaking over a stone outcropping.

He’s been driving for twenty-three hours straight. But when he ashes in the Styrofoam cup between his legs, his movements are easy and his eyes are alert and relaxed. The lack of sleep has loosened his joints, lightened the weight of his muscles. He lets the smoke float out of him like some wild bird he’s released from his cupped hands. He doesn’t think he’s ever been more tired. And he doesn’t think he’s ever been less likely to sleep.

West Texas can seem like it runs on forever. It’s a landscape Pike knows and loves. Lean and bleak, populated with blasted trees, it’s hard to imagine anywhere else on earth as desolate. For the melancholy feeling, maybe an abandoned cemetery, especially if you’ve known someone buried there. Or a city crumbling into ruin, decimated by centuries of neglect and the kind of hatred that rots youfrom the inside out. For the solitude, maybe the crags and forests of the Great Divide, or the blue frozen wastes of the Poles. But you won’t find anything like West Texas for the combination of the two. It never changes, it never will. Any crop planted begins to wither off from the moment the soil’s turned, and there’s a lonesomeness that stalks through the tallgrass like a predator. It’s a landscape meant to remind you that everyone has a hollow feeling they can’t handle. That the only trick to living your life is not to destroy yourself trying to shake it.

The sky lowers as he drives, and he watches a black cloudbank form, miles ahead. The air crackles and sparks and lightning splinters a lone tree standing up out of the bowed grass. Then the looming horizon cracks violently in two and rain breaks out, washing over the plains in a great deluge. They drive into it.

Pike finishes his cigarette and drops the butt into his coffee. Then his hand moves across the seat, past Wendy’s tossed black hair, to pull his work coat up on her shoulder. Monster lays with his proud little face rested against her chin. They drive through the rain, then come out on the other side of it, back into the burning sun.

She wakes long enough to stop for a bathroom break alongside the highway. Pike lifts a garbage sack with the clothes he’d been wearing and a five-gallon can of gasoline out of the truck and walks back on the plains while she pisses in the dirt. He kicks through the dust and the sand sage, the high hard sun burning down into the back of his neck. When he finds a clear patch of ground, he scuffs out a shallow indentation with his boot, tosses the garbage bag in, and empties the can of gasoline over it. Then he lights a dead mesquite twig with his Zippo and tosses it on the heap. Flame whooshes up and a cloud of black oily smoke plumes skyward.