The Hunt Club (27 page)

His face was pale, his mouth open. The hat was gone, and he seemed in this moment for all the world some deer caught in the headlights of a pickup, about to be hit.

“Hold your fire!” a voice came from behind me, and I turned, finally, saw where the beam off a flashlight pointed up from the water: it was a boat down there.

And there in the light off that flashlight was Mom, her head in the water facing the boat and this voice, the boat coming toward her.

“Thank God!” she shouted, her head a silhouette to me, her hair flat, and she turned to me, looking for me.

“Huger,” she said, but I looked to Thigpen to see what he would do. This wasn’t over yet.

Unc’d stopped at that voice. “Who’s there?” he called out, too loud, then, “Huger!”

“Right here,” I said, but I was looking at Thigpen.

He still held the gun out, pointed toward that light.

But then he let the hammer back with his thumb, let his arm drop, and he seemed to let out a breath he’d been holding all night.

“Who’s there?” Unc called again, his head moving, looking, listening.

“Thank God!” Mom said again, and now the boat was near on her, the flashlight beam falling from the bluff to shine on her full blast, and she turned to me again, called, “Huger, come on!” and then the beam was in my face, and everything went white.

“Who’s there?” Unc said again. “Who is that?” and the light was off me.

“One guess, Leland,” the voice said.

Unc’s mouth fell open.

I turned to the boat. The beam was on Unc, and I could see it was a man sitting at the stern of a jon boat, and two people were sitting in the bow, and now Mom was at the side of it. One of those two stood, moved to the gunnel, and reached down, helped Mom get a foot up, pulled her in.

I looked at Unc. Still his mouth hung open, him caught back in the tide now, all of us slipping away and slipping away from Thigpen back on the bluff.

Then, like whoever was holding that flashlight knew what I was thinking on, the beam swung back up to him on the horse, growing smaller each second. He was looking at us, the gun still down.

“You were supposed to have handled all this before we met up over here,” the voice called out to him.

I thought maybe I knew this voice, and I started thinking on doctors at the club: those investors Yandle senior represented.

“Good God,” Unc whispered, his face to the voice.

“Ran up on some problems is all,” Thigpen called back, shook his head. “Busted a couple ribs back there,” he said. “Took a hit off a shotgun too.” He let out another breath, reined the horse around so they were facing the woods. “Nothing I can’t handle. Meet with you in a few.” He let Jeb go a few feet, then stopped him, turned. “Do what you want with the niggers and the boy and his momma. But you leave Leland for me. Hear?”

“You work for me,” the voice said, and the flashlight clicked off, and now we were back in darkness.

But it was only a second or so before the shadows came back, and now the boat was near on me, and I heard the trolling motor on it, the little electric job on the tail, bringing the boat here in silence.

There was the man, sitting at the motor, and Mom was in there, too, next to the person who hadn’t stood, and that person who’d helped Mom in was reaching down now for me, the boat right next to me.

Tabitha.

“He got a gun, Leland,” Miss Dinah said, and now I could see only Tabitha in the dark, the shape of her hair, what little light off the moon giving in to the whites of her eyes, a shadow to her nose.

Here was her hand, and I took it, brought my leg up to the gunnel, pulled myself up and rolled into the boat. I landed on something hard, long sticks, it felt like, and I saw they were shovels, two of them, laid out in the bottom.

Miss Dinah was on the bench next to Mom in the bow, Mom with a jacket around her shoulders and crying, Miss Dinah with her arms around her.

Tabitha crouched in front of her momma and took off her jacket, that same one she’d worn last night when I’d followed her through the woods.

She held it out to me, and I looked at her.

Tabitha. Miss Dinah.

I heard the hammer pulled back on a gun, turned, saw this man held a pistol out at me.

He was looking past me at the water. He had on a baseball cap, I could see, dark jacket and pants, heavy rubber boots to his knees. But I couldn’t make out his face for the black shadow cast by the bill.

“Let’s go, Leland,” he said, and here was that voice.

Tabitha lay her jacket over my shoulders, and I realized I was shivering for the cold. I looked at her, nodded, and she nodded back. But her eyes were on the man.

“Help him in,” the man said, and I knew that voice from deer-hunt Saturdays standing at the campfire, Unc parceling out the men, who would go with who on whose truck.

I knew that voice, knew
him
: forest-green Range Rover.

Now Unc was in the water beside us, and I leaned over the gunnel, said, “Unc,” so he’d know where I was, and held out my hand. He took hold of it, put a leg up to the gunnel, and I pulled him over and in.

He was breathing hard, and sat up fast, his face to the man.

Forest-green Range Rover.

It came to me.

Unc whispered, “Charlie Simons.”

“Back from the dead,” the man said.

He was dead. I’d seen the body, seen what little of the head was left, and those skinned hands like squirrels, the dark red and glistening muscle, the white tendons of his hands. I’d seen it.

Here he was, the one from the file footage on the news the night his wife came in and told me to cherish my momma.

My mom: no one I knew.

Or was she? Thigpen’d lied about killing Simons. Or he’d made us think he’d killed him. So why wouldn’t he lie about me, about Mom and Unc, just to get me to run like I did, get me to blink?

I’d blinked. And maybe Thigpen was lying.

But he wasn’t. I knew. I’d known forever.

I shivered from the cold and wet, even with Tabitha’s jacket around me.

“Timing is everything, now isn’t it, Leland?” Simons said. We were headed upriver, the bluff already past. We sat facing him in the stern, Mom and Miss Dinah still on the bench at the bow, Unc and me on the middle bench, Tabitha next to Simons, facing us. He had one hand to the engine, the other with the pistol pointed at Unc.
The boat was moving slow, headed into the current, and I wondered where we were going, and I knew in the same moment it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

“I hope our little interruption of the festivities between you three and Deputy Thigpen hasn’t disappointed you much,” he said. “Of course, Miss Gaillard and her daughter’s cameo appearances this evening have certainly put a crimp in their day, a day otherwise filled with information gathering. But once one finds intruders rummaging though one’s e-mail, of course it behooves one to go to the source, as it were, and prune the offending branches.” He paused. “As I said, timing is everything, and the coincidence of our crossing paths in this manner has the ring of Providence about it.”

Unc was silent.

Simons shrugged. “Or maybe not. Maybe quite the opposite. I guess we’ll find out once we rendezvous with Deputy Thigpen. We’ll see whether Providence plays a hand or not.”

“Dorcas found what station he sending mail from,” Miss Dinah said from behind me, her voice low, steady. “She found out he sending from Miss Constance address at the museum.” She paused. “But he found us out.”

“I am sorry, Miss Dinah,” Unc said. “I placed you in this, and I am truly sorry.”

“Sweet sentiment,” Simons said. “And it may sadden you even more when I inform you the mail was nothing. Only cosmetic, in case someone came knocking where he ought not, figuring out what is best left a mystery.” He paused. “To paraphrase Mr. Clemens, e-mail as regards my demise has been greatly exaggerated.” He laughed. “This way it appears as though messages sent from Constance to Cleve Ravenel incriminate the two of them, implicating them in my death as well as yours, LD.”

Unc let out a breath. “And Pigboy and Fatback don’t even exist.”

“Precisely,” Simons said.

The river widened out here, a clearing coming up on the Hungry Neck side, and we would be right where I’d parked the Luv that first day I had it, the marsh stretching away for miles. “Almost to the
cut,” he said, and looked at the motor a second. “If this troller will get us there. Truth be known, I hadn’t expected all this company, even though we’ll be packing out a great deal of material this evening. Even so, the engine I’ve got will do the work, I’m certain.” He looked past Unc now. “Truth be known,” he said. “Truth be known. Now there’s an oxymoron if ever I encountered one.”

He turned the engine, and we were heading out into the marsh and off the Ashepoo, beside us the gray walls of marsh grass, the channel suddenly narrow, twelve feet across, and now Hungry Neck was what I could see behind him and Tabitha: trees growing smaller as we pulled deeper into the marsh.

Unc said, “If you’d wanted the land, you could have come to me.”

“Hah!” Simons let out quick, his head tipping back a moment, and Tabitha flinched at his move. Without thinking, I reached a hand out to her, touched her knee a moment.

She did nothing.

Simons hadn’t seen it. He shook his head, looked at Unc, then past us again, maneuvered us deeper into the marsh, the walls swallowing up the trace of the Ashepoo I’d been able to see behind us. “Your lack of vision, Leland—and I apologize for the bad pun—though precisely what I’ve come to expect from you, still astounds me,” he said, his words perfect the way South-of-Broaders made them perfect: to remind you of who they were, and of who you weren’t.

“Land,” he said, and steered this time to his left, those walls still around us. “If it had been only the land, there would have been no need for all these forensic pyrotechnics. No need for the degloving of hands and the blasting away of any dental records an indigent male of my approximate height, weight, and skin coloring might have revealed, rounded up with no questions from me by my loyal sidekick, Deputy Thigpen. I could have simply gone in with the rest of the boys and made an offer to you. But you and I both know what good that’s done. Delbert Yandle as front man? Come now. Even you’re not going to give in for that.”

“Let them go,” Unc said. “Let them all go. You want me. It’s only me, Charlie.”

“Noble, certainly,” Simons said. I still couldn’t make out his face for the shadow across it, only pictured that file footage, him standing at a podium and waving in triumph, his wife seated beside him, looking up at him.

“Noble, unto death. But if you believe I’m merely after a blood sacrifice, you are mistaken, and prove yet again you haven’t the ability to grasp the scope of things around you. To my way of thinking”—and now he turned us again, the moon swinging through the sky above us, the walls of marsh grass the same, all of us weaving deeper and deeper into the marsh—“there is a vast array of information that has been disseminated by hook or by crook to each one of you, including the deaf-and-mute young virgin beside me.” He nudged Tabitha, and she flinched again. She had no idea what was being said here, her eyes on us. “Even Miss Dorcas here possesses information quite detrimental to my endeavors, and though you, Leland Dillard, are responsible for her sifting through cybertrash, that responsibility isn’t enough to have you serve as stand-in at her execution.”

“Goddamn you, sir,” Miss Dinah said, and I heard on the words a tremble, and heard steel at the same time.

“There is no God, Miss Gaillard,” Simons said, in his voice a kind of laugh. “But if it gives you a certain semblance of comfort to call down on me the wrath of your empty faith, please do so.”

“No need,” she said, that tremble gone now. “You done that work yourself.”

“Quick-witted to the end,” Simons said, “and just in case I forget later on when things will get ugly between us, let me say thank you for all those biscuits and eggs and bacon and grits and fried chicken you’ve served me over the years Saturday mornings at Hungry Neck.” He turned the boat again, that moon moving once more, and now in my line of sight fell one of those nameless islands, a small one, a rough rise of brush and a single palmetto, black and silhouetted in black above the marsh. It was maybe a hundred yards off,
the snake of this cut maybe headed there, maybe not, and I wondered if the plan was just to kill us all and bury us out on one of these islands and be done with it, head back to Hungry Neck and whatever was so valuable even the land itself was taking a backseat.

“What do you want?” Unc said, his voice low, too hard and sharp for a whisper but nearly silent all the same.

“What you don’t know will kill you, Leland,” Simons said, and gave that same sort of laugh. “But if you must know, it’s money. Hate to be as vulgar as all that, and as predictable, but it’s money. And with the money to which I am laying claim comes all its attendant joys, chief among them a new life. Born again, as it were, Miss Gaillard.” He leaned to his left, looked past us and nodded at her.

She said nothing. Mom had stopped her crying, was breathing quick and shallow.