Last Call for the Living (17 page)

Lucy smoked half a cigarette with her aunt while they picked out hand-me-down clothes from the attic.

Asleep in her aunt's spare room she dreamed about Hicklin. Other men, too. But his memory was strongest. His smell. Muscles in his forearms. The blackheads behind his ears. Lucy loved to squeeze them. When he was in a good mood he'd flip over on his side so she could dig in with her nails. Like a pair of monkeys grooming each other. Memories of him clung to Lucy like pricklers to a pair of socks.

The rest of that afternoon was a blur. A pain like she never felt. Charlie came out headfirst. First thing he felt was the waiting hands of the doctor. At first the doctor studied the newborn as if something was amiss. The baby didn't make a sound. Lucy felt her throat close up. Felt like an eternity, waiting, hoping, fearing the worst.

But then Charlie cried. Lucy raised her head and stared. She'd never forget the expression on her baby boy's face, so peculiar. Charlie seemed disappointed in his surroundings. Expecting something different. Like a vacationer disillusioned with his accommodations.

Later Lucy held Charlie for the first time. She took deep breaths. Looked with her one good eye into his healthy two.

And tried real hard not to see the face of Charlie's father.

*   *   *

Charlie's lungs felt
pinched in his chest. He fought for air. A pair of meaty hands grabbed him by the ears and dragged him backwards. He watched as another man as big as Hicklin scooped up Hummingbird with one arm. The man wore a ski mask. Charlie noticed his eyes—dull as livestock—peering back at him.

The man curled a thick bicep around Hummingbird's neck and yanked her to her feet, choking off a scream.

They reached the front door of the cottage.

Charlie was shoved through the threshold. The other man carried Hummingbird inside. She kicked, her legs cycling and scissoring in the air. She spit and cursed at the men, but neither said a word.

Charlie turned around. Raised his hands in submission.

Please, sir. Please …

The polymer stock of a shotgun was the last thing he saw for a while.

*   *   *

Charlie opened his
eyes, although his throbbing head told him not to.

They had tied Hummingbird to the chair. The older man reached back and slapped her. He looked at his hand and, disgusted by what he saw, wiped it on a pant leg. He turned his head and glared at Charlie. The ski mask was rolled up revealing a beefy face, a thick goatee like a skunk tail pointing due south.

“What you looking at, boy?” Lispcomb said.

Charlie craned his neck, averting his gaze to the other man. Nathan Flock returned his look with a pointed, level stare, the shotgun at rest in the crook of an arm.

“What's a matter? You a goddamned pussy?” Hummingbird said, directing their attention away from Charlie.

Lipscomb slapped her again with an open hand. A gummy tooth flew from her mouth.

“One of you bitches know something!” he said, his face twisting with accusation.

Hummingbird raised her chin defiantly and said, “I'll go round and round with you all night.”

Her tank top hung off the shoulders in shreds, her rib cage breathing through the skin. Charlie realized his right leg was slick with urine.

Lipscomb ran a hand across her forehead. With the other hand he grabbed her mouth and squeezed it open.

He shook his head, clucking his tongue a few times, said, “Jesus. Look at them teeth.”

“Never seen meth mouth like that,” Flock said.

“You get
kissy kissy
with this right here?” Lipscomb said to Charlie.

“Look at them sores on her legs,” Flock added.

Hummingbird shrunk into the chair, a wild guess of a woman breathing in teaspoons. She looked over at Charlie and managed a smile. He whimpered an encouragement. Lipscomb and Flock turned at the sound of his voice.

“What did
he
say?” Lipscomb said.

Flock shrugged, said, “Who is this flabby shit bird anyway?”

“Reckon he might be that bank teller Hicklin took hostage,” Lipscomb hazarded. “Stupid motherfucker shouldn't a took one to begin with.”

There was a menacing cast in Lipscomb's eyes. He stood over Charlie. Nudged him with a steel-toe, playfully, as if sizing up his entertainment for the next ten minutes.

“Who are you?” he said.

Charlie scurried to a corner of the cottage. He kept his head down when he spoke.

“Charlie C-Colquitt.”

“No, baby!” Hummingbird said. “Don't tell them nothing!”

Lipscomb shot her a look that could stop traffic and without raising his voice said, “I'm going to break every bone in your right arm if you don't shut that fucking mouth of yours.”

The calm delivery was enough to give Hummingbird pause. She scowled at him but remained silent.

“So he that bank teller then?” Flock said.

Lipscomb nodded. He turned and knelt next to Charlie.

“You know where Hicklin is, bank teller? Know what he done with the money?”

Charlie shook his head, turning stoic as sun-bleached wood. He jumped at the sound of Hummingbird's voice.

“You ain't never gonna find that money, peckerwood!” she screamed. “He done left us all!”

Lipscomb pursed his lips in disappointment. He hopped up, spun around and charged her. Charlie struggled to his feet, but Flock knocked him to the floor with a swift kick. He watched as Hummingbird seemed to shrink in Lipscomb's shadow.

Managing to work a hand free, she lunged off the floor—chair and all—and raked her nails down Lipscomb's cheek. Little rivulets of blood appeared in their wake.

He picked her up, hoisting her into the air like a bale of hay. She was airborne. Thrown with staggering force, and if it hadn't been for the wall she might have sailed on off into space. She struck the wall of the cottage and slumped to the floor.

The sound of her breathing only enraged Lipscomb more. Charlie cried out, pleading with his captors, but neither listened. Flock popped him with the butt of the shotgun, then pinned his face against the floor with a muddy boot.

An image of Hicklin appeared, a hallucination, merely a figment of Charlie's traumatized brain. But oddly comforting all the same. Charlie saw Hicklin's shotgun. An iris-in on smoke from the muzzle. The Technicolor homicide about to play out again.

Charlie opened his mouth but could only muster a hoarse cry, his vocal cords shredded, spent like a motor not turning over. Flock watched Lipscomb and Hummingbird with a manic enthusiasm, laughing like people do on a roller coaster.

Lipscomb had become unhinged.

Charlie closed his eyes before that steel-toe boot came down on Hummingbird's head.

Wishing there were a way to cover his ears.

*   *   *

Hicklin spent the
afternoon scouting. He stumbled upon a creek surrounded by blackjack oaks and tall spruce, the air along the banks buzzing with wasps and mosquitoes. He gauged where he left the truck, parked just before a covered bridge that didn't seem fit to accommodate a tricycle. Always had a good sense of direction, just like his own father. There were few good memories of him and all of them involved those woods and a rifle. Hicklin had the cash from the robbery on him, rubber-banded in rolls of two thousand and stuffed into a duffel bag. He needed a place to stash it. A place only he might know.

He knew he could make that money last for a good long goddamn time.

And maybe the boy would come with him.

Hicklin crossed a field of broom sedge rank from rainfall, a low ceiling, clouds floating by as if browsing for the perfect place to drop their cargo. He arrived at an old hunting cabin he remembered from his youth—the place he'd been looking for, popular as a rendezvous for trappers of black bear or fox. Built by a Wright or a Donaldson, he couldn't be certain. The cabin belonged to everybody, and for local folks like his daddy and his pals from the mill it had served as a refuge from the responsibilities of married life. He never went a day without drinking and had a talent for cruelty. But something about hunting those woods brought him a peace he couldn't find elsewhere. Brief moments, Hicklin remembered, when his daddy had approached the kindness children expected from their parents yet so randomly received.

Foundation stones were all that remained of the cabin, however. A few rusted traps in the weeds, who knew how many more out in those woods just waiting to be sprung. A chimney had toppled, as if pushed over in some long-forgotten act of desperation.

Must be a hundred years old,
he figured, eyeing the crumbled stones and bricks.

There was a box stove on its side, partly concealed by ivy bush.
Could work?
Hicklin passed a hand between pink flower clusters, right across the edge of the stove, its finely cast iron deluded of its luster from years of exposure. He counted six plates. Looked inside at a large orb of web that stretched the width of the oven's interior. The work of a barn spider, the web was peppered with the wings and legs of luckless insects who'd stumbled upon it. An egg the size of his big toe trembled at the center of the oven.

Don't see momma spider anywhere.

Hicklin lit a cigarette, considering the stove. He could smell a big summer rain approaching. Persistent thunder. Flickers of lightning. Without delaying further he stuffed the duffel bag inside the oven.
Sorry for your loss, momma spider.
He looked intently back to the northeast, the placement of his truck to the clearing, the stream and covered bridge, up the narrow switchbacks to the safe house illuminating itself in his mind, as did a trickle of memories.

Know where you stand in relation to things,
Lipscomb once told him as they walked the yard.

Hicklin remembered hunting with his own father, on land to the west of where he stood now. He was instilled with a fine sense of direction (and a propensity to drink) if nothing else from the man. More than a decade of incarceration had sharpened that skill to a point, an intuition, a sense of where you were in relation to the dark corners of a prison yard, to the predators stalking the tiers. The phantom paths of the world.

And the beasts who lurked among them.

When Hicklin made for the pickup, he did so through the wind and rain.

*   *   *

He drove fast,
dragging a tail of dust behind him. The road became paved. Raindrops dotted the windshield. In the rearview he saw storm clouds. Lightning like the prongs of a trident horizontal across the sky.

At the lower altitude his ears popped. The asphalt was smoother now. The road level and straight. Hicklin felt as though he'd arrived back on a map. Entered the land of public record. Territory thoroughly explored and charted. The trees to either side were as thick as prison bars. He made a left at an intersection, then drove for four miles down Highway 9, passing a barn, an old town of tin roofs. Past a feed store, abandoned lots and lonely-looking homes with junk piled up in the front yards. Another left turn brought him to a convenience store.

Where he waited in the truck.

The lone customer walked back to the gas pump and started his car. Drove away.

Hicklin had the place to himself.

*   *   *

The man behind
the counter raised his head and nodded when Hicklin walked in, his attention returning to the book in his hands. It was a worn paperback called
A Deadly Shade of Gold
. Fluorescent lights illuminated rows of potato chips and energy drinks. Day-old coffee, a microwave next to the warmer, brown stains splattered across the glass. Hicklin already had an idea where the safe was. Lone surveillance camera behind the cashier. Probably for show. One exit between the restrooms and stacked crates of two-liter soda bottles. Probably a couple hundred bucks in the place if he really pushed his luck.

He checked out the snack food. Energy bars, beef jerky, crackers, roasted peanuts. He placed items on the counter. The man didn't look up but once. Probably about Hicklin's age. Country and weathered, the cashier's face had the features of a lapdog that preferred to be left alone. A bookworm still living with Ma. He wore a polo shirt with an oil company logo. Chewed on a toothpick as he read.

Hicklin grabbed two Gatorades and a case of beer. Three calling cards. “I get a carton of Spirit Lights, too?” he said.

“The yellow box?”

“Yeah.”

The cashier surveyed the goods.

“You going on a trip, huh?” he asked nonchalantly.

“Heading down to Florida to visit my brother and his kids,” Hicklin replied.

The cashier turned and looked out the windows. A tractor-trailer loaded with treated wood drove by.

“Looks like we gon' get some rain here shortly.”

The small talk went unanswered. The cashier keyed in the items on the register, glancing at the lightning bolts tattooed on Hicklin's neck. He'd worn a sweatshirt to conceal most of the ink, but even with his hair growing out, Hicklin had a face that told people:
Yeah, I've been there and places far worse
.

The register's display read fifty-four dollars and change. Hicklin thought to break a hundred, but the bill was too crisp and new. He handed the cashier three crinkled twenties instead.

“Have a safe trip, now,” the man said in parting.

Hicklin paused at the door. There was a tape measure tacked up for the clerk's benefit. When some junky waving a revolver burst in for the fifty bucks in the cash register and a lottery ticket. The tape measure topped out at six-foot-six, the top of Hicklin's head passing just under that mark. A bell jingled against the door as he exited. He walked silently past the pay phone and trash can, the icebox with a cartoon polar bear painted on the side. The locked-up propane tanks.