Morgan knew Drake was still angry about it all. The boy had barely spoken to him in the last hour, not since he’d told him who the men were. Or, more aptly, who they were to the best of Morgan’s knowledge. Killers through and through, and Morgan knew, too, that he should be scared of them, but he just wasn’t. They had never been unkind to him in all his dealings. They had protected Patrick. And Morgan could not deny them his gratitude.
He set the box of ammunition down on the table and pushed it away from him. He looked up at Drake where he stood at the window. “What’s this for?”
“They can come into your life just as easily as they came into mine.”
“They don’t know where I live,” Morgan said. “They don’t know about this place.”
Drake stepped away from the window and sat opposite Morgan. He picked up the shells of bird shot and fed two into the bores of the shotgun. And then he placed the gun back on the table, pushing it with his fingers toward Morgan.
“What will you do if they come here?”
Drake brought out his service weapon and showed it to the old man. He put it away at the back of his waistband almost as quickly as he brought it out, looking away from Morgan until he could find his words. “I’m angry, that’s all. I’m just angry and I have no place to go. I know almost as much now as I did this morning and that’s nothing at all.”
Morgan rested his eyes on the shotgun again but didn’t comment. After a while he asked, “You and your wife have any children?”
Drake turned and looked at his grandfather and then looked away again. After a moment he said, “No,” to the empty pane of glass.
Morgan thought to leave it, but he thought he’d see it through. “You ever wonder what it would be like?” Morgan asked.
Drake stirred but didn’t say anything.
“It replaces all there ever was in your life and all there will ever be,” Morgan said. “Even if you turn your back on them the feelings you have will still exist, knowing they’re out there, knowing something that came from you is out there in the world.”
Drake got up from the table and walked to the stove. Taking his time he turned on the propane and lit the small burner. He poured water from the pail into a pot and set it to boil. “What if you found out your child murdered someone?” Drake said. “What would you do then? Would you still love him?”
Morgan thought that over. He knew why the killers had come into his grandson’s life. He knew what they’d been promised and how it was Patrick had come to possess what they were looking for.
Money. It had existed out there in the world for many years and it would exist out there in one form or another for many more. And it meant nothing to Morgan. Not a thing. “I still love Patrick,” Morgan said.
“No matter what he’s done?”
“I don’t like what he’s done. I don’t think he was right or that many would forgive him. But, yes, it doesn’t change anything in me.”
Drake took two tin cups from beside the sink and then turned to his grandfather and gestured to the boiling water. Morgan told him where to find the tea and then Drake poured and brought the cups to the table. Both sat at the table with the hot tin between their palms. Finally Drake said, “You get lonely out here? No phone? No neighbors? No one to talk to?”
Morgan told his grandson about the woman at the post office. He told him about the meal they’d had. About the way they sat and talked through her lunch hour. He told Drake about the old veteran from Walmart and how the man—even with all he’d done in his life—had seemed dissatisfied. Like he had one eye on the past and the other on the afterlife.
“I’m worried about Sheri,” Drake said.
“I know.”
“I’m not a killer,” Drake said.
“I know that, too.”
“I’ve thought about it a lot in the last few hours. I’ve thought about what I will do when I find those men—just doing it, but I don’t know if I can.” He raised his eyes and Morgan could see the worry painted on his face. “I tried to shoot a man once,” Drake said. “He put two bullets in me and sliced up my hand. I couldn’t do it. I should have but I didn’t and I think about that a lot. Reliving how it went wrong.”
“You’ve got to let that go.”
“My father told you about that?”
“He did.”
After a while Drake asked. “Are you scared? Those men out there—you worry about what they might do when they have what they want?”
“No,” Morgan said. “I imagine they’re making their minds up about all of us, but I don’t feel threatened by it.”
“You think my father would feel the same?”
“I think if he knew you were here with me, Sheri taken by those men, he’d do something about it. I think he’d have to.”
THE GIRL WAS gone when Patrick woke. He lay on the sofa looking up at the ceiling of Maurice’s living room. Night outside and the occasional wash of headlights going past on the road. He didn’t know what time it was but didn’t think he’d slept for very long. With one hand he pressed the thin sheet Maurice had given him to his waist and swung his legs to the floor. With his other hand he searched the sofa for his underwear and then pulled them on.
In the bathroom he pissed a stream of urine that smelled of whiskey, his free hand held out on the wall for balance. From the window over the sink he could see Maurice’s red pickup still parked there in the drive. The reflection of the streetlights shining brightly on the waxed paint.
Patrick ran the faucet and then cupped the water and washed his hands and face. He didn’t know what he’d thought to accomplish coming here. He only knew that he’d needed to come, that he owed Maurice that at least.
When he was done he dried his hands and came out of the bathroom. The house dark and the clock on the stove telling him it was nearly one A.M. The door to Maurice’s room cracked and Patrick stopped just beyond. Maurice a dark shadow on the white sheets of his bed. The gray pants pulled up and no shirt to cover his chest. Patrick pushed the door open a foot. “You awake?” he asked.
Maurice shifted and then looked up. “Some night, eh?”
“Yeah.”
Maurice was smiling now, a big grin showing on his face. “You won’t want to wash that smell off for days,” he said. “There’s nothing like it. You feel me, right?”
“I came here because I thought we should talk. I’m out now. I owe you. You took care of me in Monroe. I didn’t want you to think I forgot.”
Maurice pulled a cigarette from somewhere and lit it, offering one to Patrick.
“No,” Patrick said.
“I didn’t forget, Pat. I knew you’d come by. I’m glad you did.”
“I need you to help me get the money. I need that truck out there.”
“Sure, Pat. We can go in the morning. I don’t have a problem with that. I know you came here for more than just a good time.”
“It’s a lot of money,” Patrick said.
“I know it is.”
“I just thought it would be on your mind.”
“It has.” He smiled again and then took a long pull off the cigarette and let the smoke roll up out of his lungs into the room. “You did have a good time, didn’t you?”
Patrick watched his old friend. He hadn’t moved but to light the cigarette and he lay there in his bed. On the nightstand beside him, Maurice’s wallet, cell phone, and keys neatly stacked one on top of the other like a cairn of rocks marking a trailhead. “Yeah, the best,” Patrick said. “Better than being in prison.”