The Hunt Club (24 page)

We were in a clearing of sorts, big as the trailer, live oaks lying low all around. A screen of growth surrounded us, this empty piece of land where the wetlands surged up, the ground soft and spongy, puddles now and again, and I wondered if we were off to the north, anywhere near Cemetery Road, or Baldwin, or Lannear.

“We have to go,” I whispered, and heard how it was me that’d made this decision, not Unc pushing from behind, not Mom pulling because she couldn’t keep up.

It was me. Huger Dillard.

I took a deep breath, grabbed up Mom’s hand, Unc’s arm, and I started off across the clearing.

They said nothing, and we splashed through water as we crossed, then ducked beneath more limbs, Unc’s hand back on the tail of my jacket, me a divining rod of some kind, telling him exactly which way to turn as we came to a palmetto and rounded it, then a fallen log, the three of us up and over it and going again in a second, all of it
in the best way I could gauge as being in the opposite direction of that gunshot.

We ran, the screen of trees not a screen at all, but just growth without end, a wall as deep as the woods with only a moment or three now and again of clear woods, of tree trunks around us like the twisted skeletons of animals too big to believe, then came the growth again, mixed-in rotted stumps and more dead branches, all of it only slowing us down and slowing us down so that, though it seemed we’d run for miles, I knew that gunshot a few minutes before was just a hundred yards or so away.

It was Mom this time to stop. She let go my hand, just let it go, and stopped.

She had her hands to her knees again, her shoulders up and down for the breaths she was trying to grab. Slowly she shook her head.

“We can’t stop,” I whispered, and put a hand to her back, saw in the dark only the blurred image of my mother’s face: her mouth, her nose, her eyes.

“All y’all!” came Thigpen’s voice, far off and muffled for the woods it had to travel through to find us. “Ollie ollie oxen in come free!”

Mom let out a single, small sob. Just a cry, nearly silent, but here with us.

I whispered, “Let’s go,” and took her hand, turned to find Unc.

He was right there, his face as close to mine as when he’d told me to run.

He whispered, “Find the North Star,” his whisper next to nothing, even less than Mom’s cry. But I’d heard him.

“What?”
I whispered.

“Got some business with y’all,” Thigpen called out.

He was out there, on horseback, with a gun.

“I woke up when the truck stopped back there,” Unc whispered. “When we got here.” He paused. “I don’t know where we are. But you find Polaris, we might have a clue.”

Mom was beside me now, stood close. She held my hand tight.

I looked up. We were beneath a canopy of branches, the only
piece of sky I could make sense of that half-moon, broken up for leaves.

I whispered, “I can’t see much. We have to get to a clearing.”

Unc nodded once, and we turned, started away from where that voice had come.

The next clearing came a minute or so later, past a patch of dead blackberry bushes we had to step through, the thorns tugging at sleeves and legs and ankles, until we were there, in a piece of land covered over in white grass knee high.

I stopped, looked up. This time Unc didn’t let go of my jacket, and turned with me as I scanned the sky.

The moon was clear now of leaves, the stars thin for that moonlight but still there. I turned slowly, the sound of my heart beating too loud in my ears, and for a second I was afraid that sound would give us away and scare off these stars, both.

I turned slowly, looking, looking. Then there it was: Polaris, straight ahead, almost touching the tree line, but there.

I took in a breath, whispered, “Got it.”

“Had to polish off ol’ Doc Ravenel,” Thigpen hollered. “Case you wondered what that last shot was about.”

He was closer now, the words clearer, sharper.

“Turn me,” Unc whispered. “Turn me to it.”

His eyes were closed now. He’d let go my jacket, stood there, waiting for me to touch him.

I looked up at the star, at him, the star again. Then I stood behind him, put my hands to his shoulders, turned him toward it. He was a quarter turn from it, his feet taking small steps, his whole body under my strength, as though if I were to let go his shoulders at this instant he would topple. Then his shoulders were squared to it.

He whispered, “Lift my face to it.”

I brought my hands from his shoulders, placed them along either side of his jaw. I could feel the stubble on his face, the hard bone right there under skin.

I lifted his jaw, his head leaning back in front of me, that Braves cap still on. I looked up at the star, his head tilting back, until it
seemed we were both staring up along the same imaginary line, some tangent off planet Earth that could draw us in the right direction, and I stopped.

My uncle. A blind man, our compass.

I let go his chin, set my hands on his shoulders again, his face to the North Star. Then slowly, slowly, his chin came down, until finally he faced the ground, and I wondered what pictures played through him right then, in this silence, this black. I wondered what memories of Hungry Neck he held, what maps he knew, maps drawn not on paper but on his heart.

Mom touched my shoulder then, and the three of us stood there, above us a black night sky, as black as any idea of what might happen next to us might be.

I heard movement to our right, leaves moving underfoot, and my hands tightened a second on Unc’s shoulders in fear.

Then he shot his arm out to his side, pointed off into woods.

Here were more sounds: leaves, a branch crack.

He turned toward where he pointed, reached to me, this time grabbed hold of my belt at the small of my back, and pushed me away in front of him, and we were running. I looked back a moment for Mom, saw her running, reaching for my hand, reaching for it, then I felt it, and I turned, ran harder into the wall of woods.

“No problem your running off like this,” Thigpen called. “Only makes it a little more interesting is all.”

The growth went thick on us, me slowing down and ducking and pushing away and ducking again, Unc tight on my belt, Mom letting go now and again to handle herself on her own. Shadows down and around us moved quick, darted in and out, became the horse he was on, became Thigpen himself swirling up and in while still we ran, and while still I didn’t know where we were headed.

“Don’t worry how I’ll explain this one to SLED,” Thigpen called again. “Got four or five different guns on me.” He paused. “Including that one you got last night, Huger. Turns out Reynold had hold of that bad boy.” He let out a laugh. “Each of y’all’s going to
be shot by a different one. This whole thing’ll look like one big redneck-on-redneck crime spree, everybody firing on everybody else.”

The ground dipped down a moment, a puddle splashed through, back up to level ground.

Then came the hard thrashing of something on us from behind, the heavy pounding of a horse through woods. It was a sound I’d heard a million times before: Patrick and Reynold coming up after the dogs’d run through.

We came to a fallen oak, the trunk of it four feet high, and I started over it, felt Unc let go and Mom both, all of us up and scrambling.

I slipped down the other side, felt Unc take hold. But Mom’s hand wasn’t there, and I’d already taken a couple steps away when I turned, saw her behind us, bent over.

I turned back to her, Unc going with me, and moved to grab her, to pull her with us, and still the thrashing came through the woods, a crash and tumble of broken sounds coming right for us, and I glanced over the top of the trunk, saw way back in the woods a shape, big and hulking, black and lumbering inside all the shadows and black, headed for us.

I crouched, hoped he hadn’t seen me, and reached for Mom, reached for her, ready to spin, to keep running.

But then she quick lay down, rolled away and beneath the log, and she was gone.

I squatted, looked for her, Unc coming down with me. He pulled hard on my belt, his signal to get us out of here, get us going and away.

Mom’s hand came out from beneath the log, that jacket sleeve like some thick and jittery snake, waving frantic at us, and I took it, lay flat on the ground, rolled like she’d done, and suddenly I was inside total black save for a couple-foot-wide swath of gray, that slip of space we’d rolled down through, my back pressed into Mom.

Now the pounding was even thicker, heavier, right here in my
ears, us down beneath the ground, the horse hard on us, nearly here, and now Unc was squatted down, and I reached out, pulled hard on his hand, and he rolled toward me and Mom, his body pressed into mine, the three of us smashed together in this washed-out space, cold and damp.

And just as Unc fell into place in front of me, the whole trunk shook, a huge shock of sound and movement, and in the next instant the whole world was fixed in a perfect silence, no sound at all, and now here came the horse, I could see over Unc’s shoulder, the whole of Jeb Stuart flying off in front of us from above, then the shock of it landing, the heavy strike of the hooves on the ground out there enough to send down on us wet rotten wood, and there sat Thigpen, riding away, in his silhouette a shotgun out to one side, him ducked low in the saddle, riding hard.

Riding away from us, into the woods.

I pushed at Unc, wanted up and out of here to head back the other way. But Unc didn’t move, reached back his hand and touched at my face with it, found my lips, and put his hand to them a moment:
Stay put
.

Thigpen kept heading away from us, the hoofbeats thinner, farther away. I could see him, still low, the trees about to swallow him.

But then he stopped, pulled the horse up, nosed him this way, and they were standing sideways to us, maybe thirty yards off. That silhouette again, shrouded and choked by the silhouettes of limbs and trees.

Mom moved behind me, put her arm over my shoulder, clutched at my jacket. She was breathing hard.

Thigpen wheeled the horse around, started back at us, walking it slow.

I whispered, “He’s coming back.”

Unc and Mom froze.

“Don’t make this any harder than it already is,” Thigpen called out. “Larry, Moe, and Yandle back there went easy. No need to make it tough on yourselves, considering you got to know by now
there ain’t no way out of this thing.” He paused, stopped the horse. Mom still breathed hard behind me, though I could feel she was trying hard to hold it in, keep it slow. Unc didn’t seem even to breathe.

“Shame about Doc Ravenel,” Thigpen said. “Something of a surprise, that one. What you might call a nigger in the woodpile.”

He started toward us again, and I could feel the cold ground working on me, digging in, and I shivered.

Mom pulled me closer to her.

“Sort of like that Dr. Joe Cray over to Mount Pleasant y’all paid a visit to,” he said. “Something of a surprise to me you ended up over there. Or did you think I wouldn’t follow you, Leland?” He stopped the horse again, this time maybe twenty yards off. He was talking normal, just his voice out in the night. He knew we were out here.

He moved a bit, then came a flare of orange at his face, a match lit up. He held it in front of him, the match nearly going out, then flaring up, out and up. Finally he shook the match, dropped it, and turned his head, his profile to us now.

He was smoking a cigar.

The tip went bright, and he leaned his head back, brought it from his mouth, held it out. “These black cigars taste like horse shit,” he said, and laughed. He settled the shotgun back into place, the barrel out to his left. “Got this as a gift from the good doctor, once you boys left him alone in there.”

Mom pulled at me, breathed right there at my ear, and I thought I could hear the smallest edge of a whimper on each breath she let out.

“Guess that’d be lying, calling it a gift, though. More like a perk. Perk of the profession. Kind of like watching Yandle back there squirm. Listening to him squeal.” He brought the cigar back to his mouth, drew on it. “Now, that’s a perk.”

He started toward us.

“Same kind of squeal Dr. Cray give out when I popped him. Didn’t particularly need to do it, other than the fact he’d talked to
you two, and he’d be able to testify at some point to something. Which explains why it took me so long to catch up with you boys, why I didn’t just head things off at the pass at the trailer.” He chuckled, his shoulders moving up. “Then again, we’d never have discovered this little gold mine set up in the woods. Worked out nice. This way there’s no backing out of agreeing to sell Hungry Neck, because all y’all, the whole Dillard clan, will be long dead and gone, and the land’ll be seized by the state, and the wonders of the greased palm will serve this whole stinking patch of land up to the people who want it, Leland.”

He stopped suddenly, looked quick off to his right, the tip of the cigar gone a dull red. He’d heard a squirrel, maybe. Still, he sat there, listening, looking, while my heart beat, banged in me too loud, my breaths thin and empty.

He’d killed Cray.

Slowly he looked away from his right, turned to the left. He drew on the cigar, the tip going bright orange. “Course that bad boy with no head nor skin to his hands didn’t squeal a bit when he met up with the working end of a shotgun.”

He gave the reins a shake, and Jeb moved a few feet before Thigpen gave a pull, stopped him again. “Not him,” he said, and now I could feel Mom shivering, clutching my shoulder, breathing shallow and quick. “That man had testicular fortitude when it come to meeting his maker.” He took the cigar from his mouth. “Testicular fortitude. Like none I ever seen.”

Unc lay still as a stone, Mom’s shivering behind me heavier, that edge of a whimper too close on her, ready to break out.

“Them shitheads of Delbert Yandle’s squealed out, too, when I rolled that Ford of theirs. Couple of flunkies, them. Just like Delbert. No need even to waste a shell on them. Though it turns out I had to lose two on his boy back there.”

He started Jeb toward us again, the horse moving slow, step on step.