Three Times Lucky (24 page)

The Colonel always feeds Mr. Macon when he comes to the café drunk. He says it sobers him up. “I’ll get you
something, Mr. Macon,” I said. “How about a PB and J on Wonder Bread?”

“Am I talking to you?” he shouted, slamming his fist against Miss Rose’s bookcase and setting her red vase rocking. “Did I
ask
you to get me something? Sit down and shut up. Don’t, you’ll find yourself tied up like that loud-mouth stepmother of yours.”

My anger jumped like a flame to a wick. “What do you know about Miss Lana?”

“Macon,” Miss Rose said, “if you’ve hurt Lana, I swear I’ll—”

His hand snaked out. He grabbed the front of her blouse and yanked her forward, onto her toes. “You’ll what?” he growled. “Get me thrown out of my own house?”

“Daddy!” Dale cried. “Let her go!”

Time shifted into slow motion. Mr. Macon’s hand swooped down in a clean, vicious arc, slamming Miss Rose’s face, snapping her head back. She staggered sideways, her knees buckling as she crashed to the floor.

“Dale!” I shouted. “Karate! Fighting stance!”

I leaped in front of Miss Rose, hands up. Mr. Macon laughed and swiped at me like a big cat. I danced back, ready to kick. “Dale!”

Mr. Macon smirked. “Dale won’t help you. He’s a coward.”

That did it. I kicked with all my might—leaning, twisting my body and throwing my weight into it, sending a perfect round kick to the side of his knee. I felt his knee give, and saw his face twist in pain. He lurched sideways as Miss Rose struggled to her feet. I darted forward to elbow his chin, but she grabbed my arm. “Stop,” she gasped. “He’ll kill you. Macon, please. She’s a child. Just … just sit down. I’m sorry, I’ll get you something to eat.”

His laugh came jagged as broken glass, and he stepped closer, fist raised.

The first shot rang out, and the vase on Miss Rose’s bookcase exploded.

I turned. Dale stood by the settee, face pale, Miss Rose’s shotgun pointed square at his father’s heart. His eyes met Mr. Macon’s. “Get out of this house or I swear I will kill you,” he said.

Mr. Macon’s laugh wobbled thin and uncertain through the stunned silence. “You won’t shoot me.” He stepped forward, and Dale backed up, biting his lip.

He was right. Dale was bluffing. He could never pull that trigger.

“He will too shoot you,” I said. “And I’ll swear it was self-defense.”

“Hush, Mo,” Miss Rose said, her voice scared. “Dale …”

Mr. Macon edged nearer. Dale eased back, stopping in the hallway door.

One more step and Mr. Macon would have the gun. Then what? I looked for a weapon. Nothing. I glanced at Dale’s terrified face. “Pull the trigger,” I said.

Mr. Macon snorted. “You ain’t got it in you, boy.”

“Maybe not,” the Colonel said, stepping out of the dark hallway and into the door. “But you’d better believe I have it in me.”

He reached across Dale’s body and took the gun. “Good work, son,” he said. “I’ll take it from here.” The Colonel pointed the shotgun at Mr. Macon. “Get on your knees and put your hands behind your head, you yellow-bellied traitor,” the Colonel said. “Soldier?”

“Yes, sir?” I said, my voice full of tears.

“Find me something to tie this coward up with.” He glanced around the room. “Where’s Lana?”

“Isn’t she with you?”

Fear flashed across his face like lightning. “Not yet,” he said. “But she will be.”

He glared at Mr. Macon. “I said, get on your knees. Soldier? Are you okay?”

I blinked back tears. “Yes, sir. You missed seeing me in battle,” I added, squaring my shoulders. “Hand-to-hand combat with an assailant twice my size.”

A smile whispered across his unshaven face. “I look forward to your report,” he said. “Right now, we have a prisoner to deal with.”

Mr. Macon barked out a laugh. “Prisoner? What are you talking about? Put that gun down.” He licked his rough lips. “Rose, I’m sorry if I hurt you,” he said, glancing at her. “You just make me so mad I can’t help it.”

“Dale, could you get your mother some ice?” the Colonel asked. “And secure the back door, please, sir. I’m afraid I jimmied the lock on my way in.” His gun hadn’t wavered. “Macon, on your knees.”

Mr. Macon bumped to the floor, hands high. “Cripes,” he muttered. “Your kid kicks like a mule.” He gave Miss Rose a sickly smile. “I
said
I’m
sorry
.”

“I agree,” the Colonel said, taking the extension cord I’d yanked from the wall. “Sorry is precisely the right word for you. Sit back and tie your feet together. Soldier, see if you can find another cord.”

As the Colonel bulldogged Mr. Macon’s hands, Dale came back cupping a dishtowel of ice. “Macon,” the Colonel said, “where’s Lana?”

“How should I know?”

“Then where’s Slate? Where’s your partner?”

Miss Rose gasped. “His partner?”

“We ain’t partners,” Mr. Macon said. “Slate hired me to drive some pizzas to the Blalock place. That’s all.” He
twisted like a snake on a stick. “I didn’t know you and Lana were in trouble, Colonel. I swear I didn’t.”

“He’s lying,” I said, and the Colonel nodded.

Mr. Macon dropped the helpless expression, replacing it with his usual hard mask. “Fine,” he snarled. “Turn me in. Delivering pizzas ain’t a crime.”

The Colonel sat in Miss Rose’s straight-back chair and leaned close to him. “If anything happens to Lana, that’s first-degree murder—for Slate, and for you.”

“Macon,” Miss Rose said. “For God’s sake, if you know anything …”

“Try Jesse Tatum’s place,” he said, his voice sullen. “Slate said something about going back there. He probably took Lana with him.”

“Of course,” I said, watching Dale ice Miss Rose’s eye. He moved easy and sure, like he’d iced it a thousand times. “A criminal always returns to the scene of the crime. I should have thought of that.”

“Shut up, Mo,” Mr. Macon snapped. “You got too much mouth. No wonder your mother threw you away.” Dale froze, and I saw the Colonel’s hands tighten on his gun.

Finally, someone had said it out loud. And out loud, the words felt surprisingly thin.

I looked Mr. Macon in the eye. “Maybe she did throw me away and maybe she didn’t,” I said. “But if she did,
she only did it once. You throw your people away every day that rolls around, and it sure ain’t because something’s wrong with
them
.”

I looked at the Colonel. “What’s our plan, sir?”

He sat still and quiet as a rabbit, his long, fine-boned hands draped delicately across the shotgun. “We’re going to ask to borrow Rose’s Pinto,” he finally said. “If she says yes, I’ll wait for the storm to break. Then I’m going to find Lana.”

Not by yourself, you’re not,
I thought.

But I nodded, and bided my time.

The Colonel placed a pistol by the front door, next to Mr. Macon’s chainsaw.

“My pistol won’t help you,” Mr. Macon sneered. “Ain’t got no bullets.”

“Slate doesn’t know that,” the Colonel replied, checking the gas in the saw.

Dale settled onto the sofa with a new bag of chips. “Deputy Marla conned us top to bottom,” he said, eyeing his father. “Looks like she was working with Slate all along. Maybe we should change our name to Dimwit Detectives,” he added, dropping a chip into Liz’s mouth.

“She conned
me,
” I said. “You figured her out. But why would Deputy Marla team up with a loser like Slate?”

“Only two possibilities,” he said. “Money or love.”

“Or in her case, probably both,” the Colonel said, setting his pack by the door. “Soldier, were you able to find that packet in my closet?”

I pointed toward the coffee table. “I’m sorry, sir, but a
few clippings got away,” I said. “It’s hard to flatten tires and do paperwork at the same time.”

“Truer words were never spoken, my dear,” he said. He picked up the packet and disappeared into the kitchen.

I found him at the kitchen table a short time later. His candle flickered low, and he rested his forehead in his hands. He looked up, candlelight playing across the lines of his face. “Soldier,” he said, straightening the clippings. I slipped into the chair beside him and waited. “I will be honest with you, my dear. When Lana told me about these papers, I hoped she was just being dramatic. But after looking at them, I realize I was somehow involved in Slate’s robbery,” he said, his voice thick with grief. “I can’t imagine I’d have these notes if I weren’t. Apparently, Slate had at least one accomplice. I hope I’m not that man, but we have to prepare ourselves. I could be.”

I nodded. “You could run, sir,” I told him.

His smile flashed even and white in the candlelight. “Running isn’t in my nature any more than it’s in yours. I’ll accept responsibility for my past, whatever it is,” he said, sliding the clippings into the packet. “We can’t change the past, Soldier. We can only be grateful for the life of a new day, and move on.”

“Yes sir,” I said, leaning against him. “I’m proud of you, Colonel.”

He smiled. “And I’m proud of you. You’ve kept your head and your heart throughout all of this. You’ve shown uncommon courage. We’ll just need a little more courage to see this thing through.”

As the storm wore on, Dale and Liz napped, Mr. Macon sulked, and Miss Rose prayed. The Colonel paced like a leopard. I picked up Volume 6, and a pen.

Dear Upstream Mother,
I wrote. I crossed out the words.

As the hurricane roared, the Colonel patrolled. Once he stopped by a window. He winced and leaned forward, his forehead gently bumping the glass. “Colonel?” I said, rushing to him. “Are you okay?”

He put his wiry arm around me. “I am. But this feels so familiar. The storm, the danger.” Rain lashed the window. He looked across the room to Miss Rose, who’d settled on the settee with her eyes closed.

“She’s praying,” I whispered. He waited until she opened her eyes.

“Rose,” he said, “I think the storm’s breaking.”

“Of course,” she said, taking the Pinto’s keys from her pocket.

“I’ll take the back road to Jesse’s rather than going
through town. I have less chance of downed trees in a forest than out in the open, where the trees stand exposed. I’ll have to cross just one small cleared field, where the winds will be strongest. I’ll come in by the Crash Pine, and drive the lane along the river.”

He looked at Mr. Macon. “If Macon gives you any trouble, feel free to shoot him,” he added, a smile in his eyes.

“Thank you, Colonel,” she said. “That’s very generous of you.”

“I’m going with you, sir,” I said.

“Thank you, Soldier, but no. You stay with Rose. That’s an order.”

I shook my head. “I lost my first mother in a hurricane. I ain’t losing Miss Lana in this one. I’m going, Colonel.”

Dale sat up on the settee. “There’s no point arguing when she gets like this,” he said. He sighed and scanned the cords binding Mr. Macon’s hands and feet. “You’re safe, Mama,” he said, his voice soft. “And Mo and me are partners. I’m going too.”

I won’t say it was my finest hour, but it was stacking up pretty good.

I stood at attention, more or less, until the Colonel nodded. “Rose?” he said, his eyes questioning.

She hesitated. “Colonel, you have to promise …”

“With my life,” he said.

“You’re taking those kids with you? You’re all crazy,” Mr. Macon snarled as Dale trotted to his room for rain slickers. “That boy’s a coward. He ain’t going to be nothing but in the way.”

The Colonel shook his head. “A coward? Dale’s already twice the man you’ll ever be,” he said, slipping the pistol in his pack.

“Here, Mo,” Dale said, tossing me a rain jacket.

The Colonel grabbed his pack and chainsaw, opened the door, and pushed his way onto the porch. As we watched from the window he staggered down the steps, the hurricane shoving him like a schoolyard bully. He pried open the Pinto’s front door, swung the chainsaw in, and then folded himself into the car like a contortionist.

Miss Rose fussed with our rain jackets until the Pinto’s headlights flared. “I’ll hold the door,” she said. “You hold on to each other and go to the passenger’s side. The Colonel will help you.” She tried to kiss Dale, but he ducked.

“Ah, Mama,” he said, shrugging away.

“Don’t you ‘ah, Mama’ me,” she said.

She opened the door and held on as we scampered
into a wall of wind. It clutched at us, slid us across the porch like skaters. “Hold on!” she shouted. Dale grabbed my arm and we shoved our way down the steps, the wind pushing, tripping, grabbing.

“Well done,” the Colonel said as the wind slammed the door behind us. Dale dove into the backseat and we took off at a snail’s pace. The Colonel hunched over the wheel as he crept down the drive and onto the road. Hurricane Amy pounded our little car with both fists.

“It’s like riding in a drum,” I shouted, wiping the fog off the windshield.

“Help me watch for fallen trees!” he bellowed. Dale and I leaned forward. We were lucky to see ten feet ahead.

Twice we stopped to chainsaw trees out of our path.

“Are you okay, sir?” I asked as we drove around the second tree. He nodded, but he clenched his jaw and his fingers went white, he gripped the wheel so hard.

When we reached the small, open field near the Crash Pine, he stopped. “Double-check seat belts,” he said, and edged out of the woods.

The wind grabbed our little car’s nose and turned us. “Hang on!” he shouted as the wind pushed us sideways down the road, skidding, skidding, skidding. Our fender grazed the Crash Pine, and the Colonel gasped. Slowly we slid toward the bridge.

“Unfasten seat belts!” he yelled. “Prepare for emergency exit!”

I fumbled with my belt as he floored the gas. I couldn’t hear our engine through the storm’s howl, but I felt our wheels spin and finally catch in the wet gravel. We fishtailed past the bridge, the beams of our headlights dancing jagged through the trees as we bounced onto the lane leading to Mr. Jesse’s.

The trees blocked the wind again, and I could hear Dale singing himself calm in the backseat. We inched on, to Mr. Jesse’s drive. “We’ll leave the car here,” the Colonel said. He held his door as we struggled out after him. “No flashlights,” he said. “Stay behind me. No noise. Be careful.”