In New York City in the ’80s, when homicide was a cottage industry, I would have simply ignored the headline. But these days, in these parts, murder wasn’t usually part of the landscape. Premature death was common enough in a region where mining and logging were how folks earned their keep. There were plenty of hunting accidents and alcohol-fueled suicides too. There was the occasional migrant worker killed by a piece of farm equipment, but murder was rare. I could only remember two other homicides in seven years: one stemming from a barroom brawl. The other involved a woman who stabbed her husband through the heart with a kitchen knife because he’d pawned her Lladro figurines for meth money.
I skipped the letters for the moment, reading instead the continuation of the story from page one. The victim’s body, it said, was discovered Sunday morning by two deer hunters just across the state line, along the banks of a tributary to the river that fed the Crooked River Falls. The victim was found in a car registered to his father, his body with three or four gunshot wounds. One of the hunters said, “We just figured he was drunk and sleeping it off, but when we got close you could see the bullet holes in the windshield and that he was dead.”
The hunters were still pretty shaken and though they weren’t considered suspects, they were being questioned by the sheriff’s department. There was a hotline number to call, but not much else. It was only when I backtracked, turned to the front page and saw the full headline that I went cold.
REDTAILS RECEIVER MURDERED
A photo of a handsome African American kid with a white, self-assured smile stared up at me. He was wearing a football jersey over his shoulder pads, and holding his helmet tucked between his chest and his left arm. The logo on his helmet was that of a bird of prey, wings spread, talons unsheathed. The caption said his name was Lance Vaughn Mabry and that he had been a starting wideout for the Coggins and Hale College Redtails.
Coggins and Hale was a small school about twenty miles across the state line from Brixton. Academically, it was the four-year equivalent of BCCC: a place to jerk off while earning a degree of dubious quality and value. But for a school its size, it had a solid football program that had the reputation of producing good-quality, late-round, NFL draft picks. According to the first paragraph of the article, Lance Vaughn Mabry had been on just such a career path. Not anymore.
By the time Richie brought over my food, I’d read the story twice. I no longer had an appetite. I was upset for the kid’s family, sure, but that wasn’t what was affecting me. It was hard for me to ignore the incredible similarities between this kid’s fate and the scene I’d written into Gun Church after my concussion-induced dream of McGuinn in the river during Fox Hunt. The victim in my book, just exactly like Mabry, was a young black athlete. In the book, he’s lured out of a bar by Zoe, the character based loosely on the St. Pauli Girl and named after the woman who had been Peter Moreland’s country club date all those years ago. Once outside, he’s abducted, dragged out into the woods to be hunted down, and shot like a wild animal, his lifeless body left to rot out in the countryside.
Although they’d found Mabry’s body in an area much like I’d described in the book, the kid was in his own car and there was no mention of his being lured by anyone to go anywhere. There were other differences too, but I still couldn’t get my head around it. I threw a twenty-dollar bill on the table and left, taking the paper with me and leaving the burger for the flies. Richie might’ve nodded and said something. He might not have.
I was halfway home before I got my legs back under me and remembered about meeting the guy from the BCCC maintenance crew. I was too preoccupied to care and whatever he had to tell me would keep. In the car, I listened to the local news-radio station. The murder was the lead story, but their report was equally as sketchy as the Banner’s. Back home, I planted myself in front of the TV, something I almost never did. And though the TV news had remote pictures from where the body had been discovered, they had no fresh details to tell. I got out my laptop and read and reread and reread again the scene from Gun Church.
Levon Dexter felt as if he was gagging on his own thundering heart as he ran through the brush along the riverbank, his mouth as dry as the combs of the reeds he swept out of the way that snapped back in his face as he pushed on. The muscles around his eyes, his cheeks ached from the prolonged tension, yet he felt no pain in his legs despite the blood. He knew there was blood. There had to be blood. He’d felt the nicks and cuts from the coarse grasses and brambles as they chewed into the bare skin of his ankles, calves, and thighs. The only persistent pain he felt was the burning stitch in his left side. Coach wouldn’t be happy about that. By this time in the season, Levon should have been in the kind of shape to play every down on defense and special teams without breathing too heavy.
“Coach! Shit,” he thought to himself, “why the fuck I’m thinking about Coach now?” Even as he ran he fought the urge to stop and listen, to rest to catch his second wind. He also fought the anger in him and the desire to find a way to get that bitch who set him up. Part of him wanted a piece of her so bad he thought it would almost be worth it to sacrifice himself in order to get at her. But his instinct for survival and his daddy’s words drove him forward.
“They can coach you stronger, boy, but they can’t teach you speed and speed is what you got. Just keep running. The rest of it will take care of itself.”
His daddy, a hardass ex-Marine sniper, had schooled him good, so Levon had been careful to leave false traces along the way. He’d torn his shirt up and left a shred of it only a few hundred yards from where them crazy gun motherfuckers had shoved him out of the van. He’d left other shreds of shirt and pants here and there in a clear path toward the hills before doubling back and working his way along the river’s edge. They didn’t have no dogs with them as far as Levon could tell, so he didn’t worry about leaving a scent trail. He was a little concerned about the blood he guessed he was trailing as he went, but even in full moonlight it would be hard to pick up.
Damn the full moon! If it had been cloudy or if the moon had been just a slice of itself, he might’ve risked fording the river at the point where he doubled back. If, if, if … But like Coach said, “if” was a loser’s word. Anyways, with that moon up there like it was, Levon couldn’t dare cross the river: so wide and violent along this stretch. He would be way too vulnerable. Dark black skin affords you only so much of an advantage. The light coat of mud Levon had spread over his face and body to matte the shine of his sweat would wash right off the second he hit the water. Then there was his unfamiliarity with the area. What if he made it across to the other bank and it was flat and wide open over there? He’d be too easy a target.
No, he had come back by them, passing so close he could hear the crackle of dry grass beneath their feet. Only one of them spoke and loud, too: the old man with the Irish accent, the one that blond bitch called McGuinn. If Levon didn’t know better, he’d have thought that McGuinn was helping him out, signaling their position. But no, Levon thought, that was bullshit, a trap. He just continued on, using the roar of the river to mask his sound. Was a windy night, too, so his stirring the cattails didn’t draw any particular attention.
He figured he must have been near parallel to where they’d cut the tape off his wrists and ankles and kicked him out of the van, so he willed himself to slow his pace and quiet his breathing. Levon didn’t stop, but his strides were careful now, measured and stealthy. He was no fool, realizing the river’s roar that helped provide cover also prevented him from hearing any trackers that were more than a few feet away. Then, in the distance, a shot. Another. Another and another. Pop. Pop. Pop, pop. Each echo seemed to overwhelm the one before it.