Last Call for the Living (27 page)

Fear?

Yeah.

What 'bout me?

You're one of us now.

Don't have a choice, do I?

Not really.

Yeah?

Yeah. What about Lucy?

She's dead to me. As I am to her.

Sweet girl.

I don't care anymore. Haven't cared for a while.

You know what this is, right? Preacher said.

The Brand?

Yeah.

I think so.

Well, what is it?

Lookin' out for our own. Us against them.

Lipscomb chuckled.

What's so funny?

Heroin. Meth. OxyContin. Cough syrup. Cell phones. Cigarettes. Addresses. Bank accounts. Contracts. Protection. Prostitution. Politics. We play the game because the game is there to be played.

So it ain't just 'bout us.

No, niggers and spics useful to us sometimes.

So it's all about power, huh?

That is a special word, Preacher said.

Yeah?

Say it again.

What?

“Power.”

Power, Hicklin said.

You done good today, son. That faggot was a snitch and had to be taken care of anyway. You know that, right?

Yeah.

Sieg Heil,
Lipscomb said.

White power.

Now come up here and give me a kiss.

Go fuck yourself.

If only I could, Preacher said, chuckling again. If only I could.

*   *   *

They didn't leave
the motel room. Hicklin watched television, paying close attention to the local news out of Atlanta, doing his best to hide his discomfort.

Charlie slept well into the afternoon. He woke up to find Hicklin watching television in the same position he'd maintained most of the night. The window drapes were drawn, the room nice and cool. If he had slept, Charlie didn't know.

“How's your back?”

Hicklin ignored the question. “You were having one helluva nightmare last night.”

“I used to never have nightmares,” Charlie said.

“Don't lay no guilt trip on me, now.”

“I wasn't.”

Charlie stretched his arms above his head. Arched his back like a cat waking from a lazy afternoon's nap. A weatherman on television was pointing to a tropical storm gaining strength in the gulf.

*   *   *

Lulled by a
couple cold beers that night, Charlie fell into a peaceful sleep. Hicklin slowly got up and turned off the lamp. He left the television on, a gray blank screen. His last cigarette smoldered in the ashtray, wreaths of smoke hovering above the twin beds.

He watched Charlie and considered leaving. It had been foolish to stay that long anyway. Quietly, Hicklin packed the duffel bag and grabbed the keys to the truck. Tucked the handgun inside the waistband of his jeans. Every movement proved difficult, the wound below his shoulder blade having a paralyzing effect.

Hicklin had a hand on the doorknob. He turned for a last look at Charlie. The boy slept soundly, no nightmares now. Living up to his nickname again, Hicklin thought, sleeping as though he lay in a coffin.

Hicklin hooked the curtain aside and studied the half-full parking lot. Their room faced a wooded lot, but he could still faintly hear the hum of traffic on the interstate.

Go. Just go
.

After a few moments he set the duffel bag down, wincing as he did so.

And like Charlie, Hicklin didn't know where to go.

*   *   *

“What time is
it?” Charlie asked.

“About six.”

Hicklin got up from bed. Made a pot of coffee, poured a cup and walked past Charlie back to the twin bed. Hicklin fingered the TV remote, mindlessly channel-surfing. The dressing for his wound needed changing. Charlie couldn't help noticing how uncomfortable Hicklin looked.

“You can go, I figure.”

“Go?”

“Yeah. I guess that's the only thing to do now.”

“Just
go
?” Charlie said, his voice cracking with indignation. “I don't know where to go.”

“Go back to your own life. Your momma. Finish school.”

“Could
you
go back? After all this? I'm not sure I can.”

“Course you can. You're a bright boy.”

“Look at me,” Charlie demanded.

His tone gave Hicklin pause. He raised an eyebrow, regarding Charlie's cheekbones and ears, the crease between the boy's eyes just above the nose. Hicklin knew he saw himself, as if in a mirror from childhood. Or back during his first stint, when the fear came at night, just a fish staring beyond the bars, at the darkness of the cell block. The smell of concrete and iron. Waking every morning with the knowledge he might have to kill someone to stay alive.

“Tell me it's not true,” Charlie said.

“What?”

“Tell me you don't think it's true.”

Hicklin stamped his cigarette out. Both his hands were trembling.

“I think it's true if that's the truth we want,” he said.

*   *   *

The prison-issue pillow
came wrapped in plastic. Hicklin melted the bag down. When it was cool and pliable he rolled it between his palms until it took on the shape of a railroad spike. He put it in his hiding place. When he took it out the following night it was hard enough to sharpen an edge against the rim of his bedpost. Didn't take long. An hour here and there, working in secret.

When Hicklin had fashioned the plastic into a workable point, he wrapped the bottom edge in duct tape. Worked the grip in his hand until it was comfortable. For two weeks the shank stayed hidden until Hicklin was ready to use it.

Everything went according to his plan on the stairwell. He brought the shank down onto the base of his target's neck. Going deep. Hicklin felt the vertebrae part and his victim's legs buckled.

Hicklin walked away from the scene thinking about what was for breakfast.

*   *   *

Charlie watched the
light fade around the edge of the motel room curtains. An artificial orange glow replacing the daylight. Hicklin fidgeted with the air conditioner. His mood a little brighter, he smiled and told Charlie how in prison they never had the luxury of AC. How much he was going to enjoy freezing near to death that night. They shared a laugh and maybe to their ears that laughter sounded similar.

Charlie spoke of the plans he'd made in what now seemed to him his
other
life. What he would like to have in his workshop one day. He explained—because Hicklin expressed interest—that a good scientist or engineer always kept a log of his progress. Charlie favored a notebook, although it could be considered quaint, but eventually wanted a really powerful desktop computer to design custom models. He outlined for Hicklin the basics, like tools: pliers, screwdrivers and a good stock of sandpaper of varying grits. Cradle stands and spike rows and an assembly jig for the rocket fins and side cutters. Plastic cement.

The details gave Hicklin some pleasure. He enjoyed hearing Charlie describe what obviously was a great passion, although Hicklin understood nothing about model rocketry. Charlie rambled on about different construction methods, how he'd once made an ogive nose from balsa wood, a design so impressive the president of the rocket club had said it was as fine a piece of craftsmanship as he'd ever seen. Charlie smiled, remembering this unaccustomed pride in himself.

He told Hicklin about the parasite drag he encountered on one particular model. “It had been the launch lug all along,” Charlie explained, but that happened before he'd built his first tower launcher. By eliminating the drag he'd discovered a more stable trajectory for the rocket. “When you watched a rocket rise like that,” he said, “the sky seemed to grab it and pull it higher.”

Hicklin smoked, nodding here and there, asking Charlie what this word or that word meant. He tried to picture a tiny rocket launched from a field. Tried to follow its trajectory.

He popped Advil and drank bottled water from the mini-fridge, switching to beer when Charlie offered one to him. The black Mossberg was on the bed, by his side. When Charlie reached for his pack of cigarettes on the nightstand Hicklin didn't say anything. Twenty-four hours had passed. Only a few reports on the church shoot-out. Very few details. Just crazy people in a rural county shooting at each other. Hardly news when there were plenty of crazy people in the big city doing the exact same thing.

No headlines about Charlie—or a murdered cop—yet.

*   *   *

“You okay? Hey?
Can you hear me?”

Charlie's voice sounded distant, almost a whisper. Hicklin had been sealed in a dream, the same one he'd often had for the past twelve years.

The room was seven by ten feet, the walls painted white. One window with a metal frame. He could never see anything from the window.…

In his dream he lay on the lower bunk. Water was bubbling up from a drain in the floor. It was this sound that made him sit up. He hopped down, bare feet splashing in a few inches of water. He reached up to wake his celly on the top bunk, but Lipscomb was gone …

And the water continued to rise. Began to fill the cell.

It was hot enough to steam the window inset. Hicklin numbly watched as the water rose to his knees. He waded to the door, but the hatch was sealed. Climbed to the top bunk and tried to wipe off the condensation from the window in the wall. Too far to reach, and nothing to see outside. He looked down at the floor. The water was at the boiling point. The heat was suffocating.

He could only watch.

The water lapped at the top bunk.

He clawed at the ceiling, the paint compacting under his nails. Underneath was solid steel. Hicklin knew he would drown.

That's when the lights of his cell went out.

*   *   *

“Why did you
kill Niesha?” Charlie said.

Hicklin looked for his cigarettes on the nightstand.

“Who the hell is Niesha?”

“My manager at the bank.”

“Oh. I didn't know,” he said, shrugging. “She gave me a reason, that's all.”

“Like your friend?”

“Who?”

“The big guy in the woods.”

“Lipscomb? I didn't kill him.”

“You shot him.”

“Well, I just wanted to make his life difficult.”

“You double-crossed him, didn't you?”

Hicklin lit a cigarette, mulling the question for a minute.

“Okay. Yeah. Guess I did.”

“Why?”

“You talk too goddamn much in the morning.” He strained to sit up, grimacing, his pillow sticky and damp from night sweats. The dressing for his bullet wound was bloody and needed changing. He stood restlessly, looking around the motel room. Half-expecting bars to have been added to the windows while he slept. He glared at Charlie.

“What?” Charlie said.

“Suppose you quit askin' me questions. I can't stand no gabby—” Hicklin blew smoke and finished the thought.

“—cell mate.”

Charlie gave him a look.

“Were you dreaming about being back there? In prison?”

“No,” Hicklin lied.

“What was prison like?”

“You really want to know? Lock yourself in a closet for twenty-three hours. Eat a rotten apple and stale bread. Piss in a bucket. Shit in that bucket. Then repeat it every day for a year.”

Charlie considered the description, not speaking for a while.

“That mean you were in some kind of isolation?”

“Nah. Not for all of it I wasn't.”

“What's your dream like?”

“I swear I don't know why I ain't shot you and be done with it.”

“Because you can't,” Charlie said wisely. “Because you're bad, but not crazy. And you're hurt. You need me.”

Hicklin could sense the boy's satisfaction. He turned on the lamp, disgusted by the sight of the ashtray next to his bed. He lit a cigarette, fluffed a pillow and leaned back.

“Prison is just its own little world inside this here one,” said Hicklin. “Only way for us to make sense of what there is, what we are. Some people just wander, yeah. Some don't fit nowhere. Some are just straight fucking sociopaths. They wind up where I was at. Shit, some wind up as politicians and CEOs. What matters is we all got to find a little world to belong to. We go searching for it; other times it finds us.

“Prison world got its own ecology. Its own politics, its social violence.” He smiled cynically. “Close to
Heaven
as I could find. I figure if I don't make a move real soon I might be go back to Heaven, or just go down.”

“If
we
don't make a move?” Charlie echoed.

“Yeah.
We.
”

Charlie frowned thoughtfully.

“Did you like my mother?”

“Suppose I liked her,” Hicklin said, a concession he was willing to offer.

“Did you love her?” Charlie pressed him.

“I don't quite get that word,” Hicklin said.

“‘Love'?”

“Yeah.”

“Me, neither,” Charlie said.

“Why's that?”

“I think it's like, uh, a neurological mousetrap.”

Hicklin looked puzzled. “Why not just say you don't believe in no such thing as love. Like a
she-done-him-wrong
country song.”

Charlie rolled his eyes, Hicklin taking some enjoyment in needling the boy. Hicklin had known Charlie chiefly in expressions of panic, terror, pain, trauma.
Nice change to see this other side of him,
he thought.