Last Call for the Living (12 page)

Throw on a couple steaks. Call somebody special.

She heard the screen door swing open.

When Kalamity turned around he was already standing there. The man had the face of a hedgehog, breathing through his mouth with a mean energy. A tattooed hand grabbed her by the hair. She dropped the glass. It shattered on the floor. The man jerked her head back. The first sip of vodka backfired from her windpipe.

He hustled Kalamity toward the living room and threw her over the couch. Her body crashed onto the coffee table, the glass top breaking under her weight, legs and arms getting hung awkwardly in the metal frames. Coasters and knickknacks and a ceramic ashtray flipped into the air. She reached up and touched her ears, then her kneecaps. Her hands came away with blood. She worked her tongue around her mouth, running it along the edge of a newly chipped tooth.

Then a pair of boots came into view.

*   *   *

Kalamity's eyeballs felt
like hot coals, brain churning on panic overload. She looked up at the man who had assaulted her. But there was someone else there in the living room now. Another man, the younger of the two. He sat down on the couch, a beer and cigarette in one hand, his other groping for the TV remote, only to be startled by a cranky
meow
from her cat, Hershel. The cat spit and hissed, then disappeared in a flurry, the man angrily stomping down the hall in pursuit.

Prompted by a voice, she turned her head to the left.

Leonard Lipscomb was kneeling beside her. The worst type of smile on his face.

Her vision blurred. Then she passed out.

*   *   *

“Nice little place
you got here.”

A spike of pain brought Kalamity Bibb to consciousness, only to find her arms tied together at the wrists and stretched high above her head. A length of rope ran to the nearby radiator. There was very little play, as Kalamity found out when she tried to wrestle free of her bonds. In fact, the more she struggled, the tighter the knots seemed to get.

She looked down at her legs, feet dangling, tight knots attaching her ankles to the edge of the table's metal framework. What she thought was sweat soaking her shirt was actually blood. She tasted it on her lips, that copper and salt, felt it accumulating beneath her.

Not really knowing why, Kalamity started to cry when Lipscomb took her socks and shoes off.

*   *   *

He wiped her
forehead with a dish towel. Then at the tears streaming down her cheeks. When Lipscomb spoke his voice was calm and low.

“Where's your sister, Kalamity? Where's Ellamae?”

She winced at the touch, blinking through a mess of hair. She could hear a commotion down the hall. Her bedroom. That man on the couch. Hershel. She looked back at Lipscomb, who was gazing at her with the earnestness of a reporter interviewing a hurricane survivor. He spoke again, quietly, with the controlled rasp of a heavy smoker.

“Where is Ellamae?”

Her sister's name prompted a surge of emotion. Fresh tears appeared at the corners of her eyes. She knew this day would come, even as any loyalty and concern for her sister eroded to complete apathy.

Goddammit, Ellamae. Goddamn your junky ass.

“Ain't seen her in two years,” Kalamity said. “She's an addict. Hooked on meth.”

Lipscomb held his gaze.

“She's a family disgrace,” Kalamity added. She could feel her face flush with anger. “I stopped giving her money years ago. Wouldn't even let her in my home. I don't associate with people like that. I swear to you I don't know where she is.…”

She struggled for air. A sharp pain accompanied every breath. She looked away from Lipscomb, praying her half-truths and denials would appease him. But there was an overwhelming sense he wasn't buying any of it. Truth was Ellamae had been living in the family cottage for three years. Kal had begrudgingly brought her food and supplies numerous times in the last eight months, but that constituted the extent of her relationship with Ellamae Bibb.

Lipscomb's expression never changed, however. After a few moments he leaned in close and kissed Kal on the forehead. The gesture was so unsettling she felt a violent tremor run the course of her body.

She watched Lipscomb take her left foot in his hand. She started to sob, fighting her restraints, her body twisting against the sharp bed of glass in which she lay. But the screams didn't come again until Lipscomb reached behind him and produced a meat tenderizer.

*   *   *

Flock swept a
row of books to the floor with his left arm, straining to get a hand on Hershel's scruff. He was met with a big paw and even bigger claws. The cat spit at him, then scurried to the corner of the topmost shelf. The antique wooden bookcase once belonged to Kalamity's grandmother. It reached almost to the ceiling and weighed two hundred pounds even without the Nora Roberts and Janet Evanovich hardcovers that now littered the floor.

The cat's eyes jittered nervously in its head as Flock knocked aside more books, cursing at Hershel, an ugly sneer on his face. He turned his head anxiously toward the hall.

To the sounds of Kalamity Bibb begging for her life.

*   *   *

His hand was
as strong as a pair of vice grips. Lipscomb grabbed the lower part of her left foot, then struck the top with the meat tenderizer three times as if he were hammering a nail through her ankle. The talus and navicular bones popped like firecrackers. The motions were so quick Kal didn't feel anything at first, just a sandpaper sting around the joint. But it only took a few moments for a deep throbbing pain to emerge, followed by a terrible swelling. Kal struggled mightily, an outburst of thrashing that only seemed to entertain Lipscomb. But her efforts were futile and a resignation set in, Kal assuming the look of someone about to doggy-paddle into a tidal wave.

Lipscomb took a couple more quick, hard swings at her dangling feet. She felt a toe pop out of place; then a painful numbness spread across her hind foot.

Physically exhausted, Kalamity was surprised to find herself yelling at Lipscomb. A howling invective that included calling him a faggot son of a bitch and a couple other choice insults. She gathered a shot glass worth of blood and mucus in her mouth and spit right into his face.

Lipscomb didn't even flinch. Nor did he make an effort to wipe it off. The bloody spittle hung like a stalactite from his chin. He dropped the meat tenderizer and knelt down beside her, leaning over to brush away the hair that had fallen across her eyes. He caressed a cheek with his finger.

His voice was steady and assured when he said, “Where's Ellamae? Where is your sister?”

“I told you I don't know!” she pleaded. “Swear I ain't seen her in years!”

But the wheels had already begun to turn. Those time-honored ideals like loyalty among blood kin now quaint when facing her own annihilation.

So why on earth am I protecting her?

Lipscomb only smiled, his eyes glinting with disappointment. He turned and reached for something and held a finger to his lips as if to silence Kalamity. She gasped at the sight of the hammer. He casually flipped it to the claw side, and quick as a viper he snatched Kal by the mouth, squeezing her cheeks to reveal the teeth and gums.

“I'm about as good a dentist as I am a podiatrist,” he said with a chuckle. He primed the claws of the hammer before her eyes and gently scraped the surface of a front tooth.

Any notion to continue protecting Ellamae evaporated in an instant. Kalamity had reached her limit. She found herself involuntarily sobbing, a rattle in her chest courtesy of her smoker's lungs. She closed her eyes and said, “She's up in the mountains.”

“Go on.”

“Been living in the family cottage for three years. I got a map in the drawer of the nightstand … next to my bed.”

*   *   *

She must have
passed out. When Kalamity opened her eyes again Lipscomb was standing by the kitchen door, studying directions to the Bibb cabin. Flock appeared then, holding a very dead-looking Hershel by the tail, a thin rope of blood swinging from the cat's mouth. Kal fought back tears, as if showing Lipscomb and his goon any more emotion was the most appalling thing she could do.

She watched Lipscomb fold the map and put it in his pocket. Without looking at her again, he turned to Flock.

“Don't leave her like that.”

Outside Lipscomb lit a cigarette. He lifted his head to acknowledge a flicker of lightning, followed closely by a roll of thunder from an approaching summer storm. Chimes hanging from a porch beam began to sing a tune of warning. He heard Flock fire twice, each gunshot a commanding boom. And to Lipscomb that sound seemed as natural as the soft rain beginning to fall or the whistle of crickets from the field beyond the house.

*   *   *

Charlie guessed five
days had passed since the robbery.

Earlier Hicklin had counted the cash from the score, bundling the bills in straps of five hundred. He'd dried the money from the aquarium over the bathroom sink, the crinkled fifties and hundreds hanging from clothespins. The new-style bills were almost comical in appearance. Like hi-tech Monopoly money with their displaced, oversized presidential portraits, the watermarks, micro-printing and security threads just a few opening moves in the latest game against counterfeiters.

Charlie thought about the life he'd had prior to the robbery—his job at the bank, the apartment, school, exams, car payments, rent, Momma—a life both normal and insulated. A narrow path he'd carved by design.

Maybe the police would find him? They had to be looking.

One morning he had trouble remembering anything before Hummingbird and Hicklin.

That afternoon Hicklin untied him. No words were spoken, no pronouncements made. Charlie tested his freedom by going to the bathroom by himself. Hicklin began his exercise routine in the living room. Sit-ups. Push-ups. Knee bends. Charlie noticed the cooler had been restocked. He helped himself to a bottle of water, feeling strangely welcome in the cottage.

Later Hummingbird shaved him and washed his hair.

And she came in the night as a matter of routine. He'd wake to her pulling at him. When he was hard she'd plant herself, reaching for his hands, but he refused to hold them. She whispered to him about making love, but Charlie wouldn't call it that. He didn't know what to call it. Hours later he could smell her on his fingers like a smoker smells nicotine.

They'd lie atop the mattress like lovers afterward, she telling Charlie stories from her aimless life. Teaching second grade. Vocabulary and grammar and simple math. How seven was her favorite age, that's from when all her best memories came. Then she'd jump to recent history. How the school board found out that she'd lied about almost everything on her résumé. How she was fired and could never work as a teacher again. The sporadic employment after that. Got to the point where she couldn't even get a job. The methamphetamines made her feel better. Helped her forget. She did whatever it took to get them. She met Hicklin a long time ago and her life was never the same again.

I knew he was the one.

Charlie tried to follow her rapid-fire ramblings. Hummingbird's mind pinballing, tongue-tied in a tweeker's stutter. Sentences splintered into shards, but it didn't matter because she was always three or four words ahead of herself.

One time she offered the pipe to Charlie. Put it to his lips, but he batted it away. He saw the euphoria in Hummingbird's eyes. Up for days, she'd crash in a heavy, wheezing sleep.

At night Charlie found Hicklin on the threadbare couch. Empty beer cans on the coffee table. The radio tuned to a classic rock station, the volume low. Something about the disc jockey's voice reminded Charlie of the world beyond that safe house. That ordinary life where it was business as usual. It occurred to him that the world hadn't stopped for him and wouldn't. A voice in his head suggested:
Then why go back?

He helped himself to a beer from the cooler. Sat down in the chair across from Hicklin, noting the shotgun within arm's reach. The ropes were gone. It was almost as if Charlie could walk out the door anytime he chose. But he didn't want to. He wanted to talk.

“What are we going to do?”

“What do you mean,
we?
” Hicklin said.

“I mean,
us.
How long are you going to keep me here?”

“I fucked up.”

“How?”

“They'll come lookin'. But here is safe as anywhere, I reckon.”

“Why didn't you kill me?” Charlie said.

“I don't know.”

“Did you want to?”

“Yes.”

Hicklin's answer came straight as an unsheathed knife. No hesitation.

A lump rose in Charlie's throat. “Who's going to come looking? You mean the police?”

Hicklin laughed. He turned the beer up to his mouth, draining the whole can at once.

“Get me 'nother beer,
Coma.
”

Charlie reached for a tall boy in the cooler. Tossed it across the room. Hicklin winked in appreciation.

“Nah, son. The police ain't who worry me.”

“Why'd you call me son?”

Hicklin put the beer down and rose. He reached out and touched the boy's face. Charlie withdrew, eyeing the pistol holstered at Hicklin's hip, thinking recklessly to grab it.

“When were you born?” Hicklin said.

“W-what?”

“When were you born?”

Charlie told him.

“Ain't no boy. You're a man! You ever thought of yourself as a man?”

“I d-don't know. Please, sir. Please,” he said, recoiling.

“
Sir?
Haven't been called that in a while.”

Hicklin let go of Charlie's chin. He lit another cigarette and began to pace. Charlie didn't understand why people lit sticks packed with tobacco and sucked on them. Just breathed in smoke and blew it out. He sipped his beer instead. Tried to shake off the feeling he got when Hicklin touched him. Minutes passed. They heard treehoppers outside. An owl hooting lethargically.