Legally Wasted (24 page)

Presuming he could somehow escape, Larkin did
not know where to run or whom to seek. All that mattered at the
present was fleeing the house. He flung open a door and bolted into
the night. The glimmer of hope brightened as he cleared the
expansive yard and reached the thick stand of pine trees. He risked
a look behind him half-expecting a SWAT team with dogs. He saw only
the looming silhouette of the Justice’s house outlined by flashes
of blue light. The growl of Trevor’s boat diminished as his friend
shot out of the cove on his midnight ride.

Larkin worked his way through the woods.
Though free for the moment, he knew his chances of proving his
innocence had just plunged. Without Trevor and with the law on his
tail, his flight was most likely pointless. Still, he raced through
the trees as quickly as he dared in the darkness. He had no true
thought or plan of action. It was pure survival mode. Legs run.
Heart pound. Breathe.

He may have run for just a few minutes or ten
times that when he exited the woods and began striding across a
wide open field. Federal tobacco and corn subsidy programs had
turned what would have been excellent nighttime cover into a
fugitive dartboard with Larkin at the bull’s eye. Years earlier, he
would have been shielded by shoulder high plants with leaves nearly
the size of palm fronds. Now with a large moon and only calf-high
perennial grasses batting against his jeans, he was the most
visible thing for miles. He could run far in any direction, but he
could not shake the feeling that he was trapped.

He ran as fast as the moonlight would allow.
Stones, cow pies, divots, and the occasional stick - - some of
which looked just like rattlesnakes in the dim light - - littered
his path. He slowed a bit so as to not stumble and break an ankle.
His legs went into cruise control and his mind finally began to
wander. Was he simply destined to be the fall guy? Had all of his
plans only been the thrashes of an animal fighting to stay alive
when it was too dumb to know it was at death’s door?

As he reached the top of a small hill he
imagined how comical his silhouette must have been. It was a sad
loping affair: the Wolfman by way of Quasimodo. Soon his lungs
began hacking up all of the spores, dander and whatever else might
have been floating in the night air. He slowed his pace further and
coughed and spat onto the ground. Eventually, he had to grab both
of his knees and just breathe. His stamina was gone. He strained to
hear sirens in the distance or even the sound of passing cars from
a nearby road, but the cicadas sung their songs loudly and
dominated the evening.

Larkin wondered just how far off the beaten
path he may have strayed. The question was a swiftly falling
domino. How had Anthony been wrong? Would the world come to hate
him for sending Trevor to prison? Had they triggered some silent
alarm? Perhaps the house was under surveillance due to a perceived
threat against the Justice. Hell, a neighbor walking his dog could
have seen the lit office light or even Larkin’s car before phoning
the cops. It could have been any of those things or none.
Ultimately it would matter little. Trevor the Gallant had acted
bravely, but he had not saved Larkin. Trevor had only prolonged the
worry and suffering before imminent doom.

Alone and dry heaving over an anthill, Larkin
could do little to save his skin. Within the next thirty minutes
his house back in Big Lick would be raided. Within the hour, every
cop west of Charlottesville would be looking for the pissant
attorney that had, at one time or another, heckled each of them on
the witness stand. It would be blue collar badge payback.

Larkin opened his eyes and tried to discern
his spittle against the dirt and the ant mound beneath him. “I need
help,” he whispered.

Madeline was a thought. But getting to her
would be nigh impossible. His phone would be tapped and at least
one unmarked police car would be idling not twenty yards from her
front door. Impossible.

Larkin’s breaths slowed as his body finally
regained some pep. The adrenaline that had sent him rocketing from
the Justice’s house had apparently worn off. His limbs ached. Being
a fugitive was exhausting.

He stood and looked around him. Perhaps he
was ignoring the obvious, some ally in the immediate area. His
brain raced as he thought of everyone he might know in or around
the Bedford area. A name eventually surfaced, but he chose to
proceed through his mental rolodex a second time. Again, he ended
with one name and a heaping scoop of trepidation. Using the dark
ridges of the mountains as a guide, he headed for a notch
in-between two of the taller slopes.

The road leading to Terry Woolwine’s driveway
was certainly less than a typical road. Despite the condition of
the path, it gave Larkin great hope to be near
someone
. He
stumbled and bumbled his way up the mountain. Occasionally, he
wandered from the path, but he was eventually able to discern where
other passersby had worn down the land by both boot and truck tire
traffic. Grabbing a narrow dogwood trunk for stability, he suddenly
considered Terry’s deceased grandfather and whether or not the old
man would have performed barrel rolls in his pine box upon seeing
the current condition of his property. In the heydays of
Appalachian moonshine, Pappy Woolwine was rumored to have never
entered his land from the same point twice. Though his large family
lived upon his mountain, Pappy Woolwine worked damn hard to hide
that fact from anyone who might be curious. No paths marked the
mountain in his day. The revenuers were ever vigilant in their hunt
for shiners. High speed car chases leading into the mountains were
not unheard of. More than one shiner had told Larkin the tale of
Pappy Woolwine, pursued by T-men, taking a hidden turn and
literally disappearing in the Blue Ridge. Terry had spent half of
his adult life trying to locate a cave that supposedly concealed
Pappy’s souped up old Ford.

Now, with booze nearly as legal as a cup of
coffee, the shiners had lost all of their business to state run
liquor stores. Later, methamphetamine stole from the shiner those
customers who wanted something stronger than store bought
booze.

Despite the seeming lack of any identifiable
market for the stuff, shiners still littered the hills. It was
cultural. Like a bee keeper taking great pride in his honey, so too
did the contemporary shiner put pride in his product. Moonshine had
transcended the shelf life of a mere marketable business unit to
become something that represented a people and a way of life.
Families trained younger generations in the practices of good
stilling. Though revenuers no longer pursued them into the
mountains, the federal laws against shining remained draconian.
Mountain men like Terry Woolwine might have been torchbearers to an
obsolete and nearly harmless craft, but the risk of federal
intrusion was still very real. Knowing Larkin’s luck, he’d reach
Terry three minutes before the first liquor raid in twenty
years.

The path steepened. He fell more than once.
As he fumbled in the dark he remembered an article he had read some
years before about booby traps laid by marijuana growers. Burmese
tiger pits. Poisonous and starving snakes chained to stakes buried
beneath the ground. Spring guns. Surely Terry was not so
paranoid.

“No snake traps,” Larkin mumbled. He soon
began repeating the statement as he fought against loose dirt,
gravity, and a hundred aches and pains. “No snake traps.”

He gritted his teeth as he again fell. A
sharp rock sliced open the left leg of his jeans just below the
knee. The sensation of warm liquid seeping down his calf let him
know just how clumsy he had been. “Please, no snake traps,” he
whispered as he reached his feet. Pain shot through his leg and
soon he was back on the ground. Reaching forward with both hands,
he continued for a moment on all fours before realizing he would
never reach the top of the mountain. He growled in anger as he made
his way to his feet.

Suddenly, movement in the corner of his left
eye caught his attention. What could only be described as a ghost
chicken ambled through the nearby underbrush. Pale white under the
moon, the animal glowed with an eeriness that, before that night,
had rarely been seen in poultry. Larkin stared. It almost appeared
as if the bird was completely devoid of feathers, a revenant of a
thousand chicken dinners, and as awkward and as off-putting as a
hamburger patty with fur.

The bird paused as it eyed him. Not a single
feather marked its skin.

“Very creepy,” said Larkin.

The heart-stopping sound of a pump-action
shotgun preparing to fire nearly pulled Larkin right out from his
skin. He froze, but allowed his eyes to dart. He saw nothing but
thin saplings dotting the steep hillside and the ethereal bird
rooting about his feet. The unmistakable sound of the gun could
have come from anywhere.

“Please don’t shoot,” said Larkin.

Twigs snapped and leaves rustled behind him
as the person with the gun drew closer.

“I don’t have a gun,” Larkin said. He tried
to raise his hands in the air, but was forced to remain gripping a
tree limb due to the steepness of the terrain.

“Who are you? What’s your business?” asked a
voice so rough, he or she may have had a piece of birch bark in
place of a tongue.

“Larkin Monroe. I’m a lawyer. I’m – -”

“Now what in the sam hell is a lawyer doing
crawling up my property?” Though the voice was guttural, Larkin
could now discern that a woman stood behind him.

“I’m Terry’s attorney. I need to see
him.”

The woman with the gun did not reply. Larkin
risked a swivel of the head to see that the double barrel of the
gun was pointed straight at the ground. The woman’s face remained
shrouded in shadow, but the silhouette of her body was clearly
defined. She was all shoulders, as stooped and seemingly as strong
as the mountains themselves. She would take no gruff from a
smart-mouthed ambulance chaser from the Star City.

“So you’re a lawyer,” the woman repeated.
“Terry’s lawyer.”

“Yes.”

“And anything you see up here, you can’t tell
no one right? Privileges or something, right?”

“Not a word. Client-attorney privilege,”

“Would they put you in jail?”

Larkin stared at the gun. “Worse.”

The silhouette cocked her head to the right.
“What’s worse than that?”

“I’d lose my license.”

“Your license?” The woman laughed. “I don’t
see how that’s exactly worse.” She laughed again. “But I suppose it
only matters if
you
think it’s worse, right?”

“Right.”

“No license, no big money, right?”

“Bingo.”

“Lawyers,” said the woman. “Leaping lawyers.”
She smacked her knee. “Well come on then.”

She reached her free hand toward Larkin.
Larkin grasped it. Her fingers were strong and her skin felt like
worn canvas. Yanking on his hand, she forcefully directed him
toward the ghost chicken.

“Go on and grab that bird yonder,” she
said.

“Excuse me?”

The woman smacked Larkin in the shoulder and
pointed to the ghost chicken haunting the nearby tree stump.

“You’re serious?”

“It’s what I was fixing to do until I found
lawyers crawling round my trees. Once I saw you, I went back and
grabbed the gun, figured you to be trouble. You ain’t that are
you?”

“Not at all.”

“I thought so. Now just go and grab that bird
and I’ll lead you back to the fire.”

“I could hold the gun,” offered Larkin. The
chicken stepped into a shaft of moonlight revealing the featherless
hide. Dozens of small divots pockmarked the chicken’s flesh where
the plumage had once taken root.

“I ain’t letting some city lawyer hold my
gun,” said the woman. “You’ll trip and kill us both.”

“You have a point there.”

“Oh I have my points. Don’t try none of that
arguing with me, lawyer. I always get right to my points. Sides, if
I go back to the house to set down the gun, that bird will be
halfway down the mountain or some mountain cat’s dinner.”

“Right. Did it get out of your stew pot or
something?”

“Just grab it round the breast. She won’t
peck you or nothing.”

“Jesus,” whispered Larkin as he approached
the bird. The chicken regarded him for a moment before stumbling
over a stick. Sad featherless wings flapped for balance as the bird
continued to falter.

“What’s wrong with it?” asked Larkin. “Is it
sick? Bird flu?”

“Nah, the poor thing’s drunk. Come on then.
She’ll be easy to get.”

“Right,” Larkin repeated.

“Don’t you like picking up drunk chicks?”
asked the woman. She cackled at her joke all the while sounding
like a backfiring lawn mower.

Larkin approached the bird. Though he
lumbered and made plenty of noise, his quarry seemed somewhat
oblivious. It regarded the dark world through the same glassy eyes
that Larkin had sometimes viewed the courtroom.

Holding his breath, he lunged. Surprisingly,
he was able to get his hands around the chicken’s torso without
much difficulty. He immediately felt that he was gripping the bird
too tightly and relaxed just a bit. The skin felt warm and smooth.
A tiny heart furiously beat beneath his fingers. The fragility of
the small animal gave him pause. It was much lighter than he had
imagined.

“There you go, lawyer man,” said the woman
with satisfaction. “On with you,” she said as she pointed the gun
up the hill.

Rather than blaze the trail with a chicken,
Larkin waited for the woman with the gun to begin her trek up the
hillside. He held the chicken’s warm and wiggling body as far from
himself as his arms would allow. To prevent another fall, he
carefully studied the woman’s steps and tried to mimic her footstep
placement. Eventually, they reached the top. Larkin was squinting
at his surroundings when a large dog leaped at him from the
shadows.