Chapter 17
MORGAN SAT OUT ON the porch for a long time before he went in. He made fry bread in the pan and then got out some of his preserves and ate the sweet jelly slathered on the warm bread. Except for the warmth from the propane burner the house was cold and he walked back outside to sit in the sun and take in the land.
A muddy patch of earth sat halfway up the hill from the rains two days before. Stained into the gravel. He leaned back in his chair and brought one leg over the other. Up above a hawk was circling over something in the fields and he thought of his snares and wondered if it was something he’d caught.
He was tired and his lids dropped once, then again. The hunting jacket buttoned over his chest and the collar turned up. When he came awake he didn’t know what time it was and he had to take the hour from the sun. The hawk gone from the sky.
He lit a cigarette with a match and then sat there till the paper felt hot between his fingers. He mulled it over for a while before he went back inside and found the box of bird shot Drake had left out on the table. He looked this over and then crossed to where he’d put the shotgun away. He broke open the breech and looked in on the two shells. He closed the breech and found his truck keys.
PATRICK SIGNALED THE grill man and asked for the bill. A minute later the grill man came back with the waitress behind him.
“Sorry,” Patrick said. “That reunion just got moved up and I’ll be taking off soon.”
“Don’t worry about it, honey.” She was at the register now and she put in the figures and brought up the total. When she came back over he could smell the cigarette smoke on her. “I hope it all turns out for you.”
“I hope so, too.” He brought out a few bills from his wallet and laid them over the counter. It was enough to cover the total and then some. He didn’t have anything left in his wallet but a few old receipts and expired credit cards. The leather still smelled like the lockup. “Can I have a refill on the coffee?” he said.
She poured the coffee and he watched her as she did it. She’d probably be the last good memory he had in this life. After she was done he toasted her with his mug and saw the little smile come across her lips before she went to check on the other customers.
He was waiting on the phone at the other end of the diner to ring and he wasn’t surprised when it did a minute later.
He answered and Driscoll said, “I bet you weren’t planning on talking to me.”
“I wasn’t planning on ever hearing from you again.”
“Then you should have stayed where you were.”
“I think you know I didn’t have that option.”
“You’re talking about the two men who came by your house?”
“And others,” Patrick said. He held the receiver close, his back turned away from the diner.
“Maurice?”
Patrick didn’t say anything. He was still thinking about what Maurice had tried to do to him. All that time inside and Maurice had tried to cut him out of the deal.
“You still there, Patrick?”
Patrick listened to the empty sound of the phone in his hand. He could tell Driscoll was driving. “I’m here,” he said.
DRAKE WOKE IN the back of his cruiser. He lay there with his knees pushed up against the seat. His head hurt, the pain centralized over his left eyebrow. The skin hot and swollen, he held his eyes closed and he listened to the breath enter through his nose, feeling it swell in his chest and then release. When he opened his eyes he realized what had happened.
Above, through the back windows of the car, he saw telephone poles passing one after the other, the wires falling and then rising again in a never-ending series of waves. He felt the late sun on his face, and the pants he wore were hot against his thighs. But it was fading now, like it had been hotter at one point in the day. There was blood on him, too, on his pants and crusted to the front of his shirt. He could feel it under the material and on his skin.
It was only when he tried to move that he found his hands had been duct-taped behind him, and it was this movement that brought the realization of where he truly was. His wife’s thigh under his head, and the two killers in the front, Sheri looking down on him, her eyes unwavering, and Drake thinking maybe he’d been too late, maybe she was dead. And then she blinked and Drake watched a single tear roll down her cheek.
“Reunited at last,” Bean said.
MORGAN PUSHED OPEN the door and listened to the bell chime. He turned and closed the door, wooden with glass at its center. He looked out on the county road and his truck there in the gravel drive. The last time he’d been to the store there had been snow on the ground and he remembered how his truck had left muddy tracks all the way off the road and onto the drive. No more than a couple cars in the lot. Just as there were now.
The clerk was waiting for him at the counter when he turned. The clerk wiped a paper napkin across his lips and brought it away with the slight stain of mustard. Morgan knew the man’s name but simply nodded to him as he went down the first aisle, passing the Popsicle case and magazine rack on one side and the chips and soda pop on the other. He came to the back of the store and looked in on the dairy coolers there.
“You’re early,” the clerk said. He had taken another bite of the sandwich he was eating for a late lunch and he wiped at his mouth again, standing there at the counter watching Morgan.
“How do you mean?”
“Just early,” the clerk said. He took another couple bites. Finished the sandwich and then said, “You usually don’t come in till the end of the month.”
Morgan nodded at that and then looked away. The store was a mash-up of kerosene, fishing hats, T-shirts, beer, chips, hot dog buns, work pants, shoes, even horse feed and birdseed. Anything and everything was sold there and if they didn’t have it they could get it in a week. Morgan liked that about the place and he went down to the next aisle and looked over the fishing supplies. He’d never taken it up but he thought maybe he would someday. The green tackle box with the money inside the only piece of gear Patrick or Morgan had ever owned.
He came up the aisle and looked over the wares behind the counter. Cigarettes and lottery tickets, an old Budweiser shirt and matching hat that had hung in the store for as long as Morgan could remember. “What do you have for deer shot?” Morgan asked. He was looking over the ammunition now, about ten rows of boxes were dedicated to it and he was examining the various measurements and sizes on the boxes.
The clerk turned and looked to the place Morgan was studying. He selected two boxes and then brought them back to the counter. He laid them out for Morgan to see. “I never took you for much of a deer man, Morgan.”
“I’m not,” Morgan said.
He paid and left through the front door. The bell chiming again. When he started up his truck he could see the clerk staring at him through the glass door. Morgan reversed out and then brought the wheel straight. He ran the engine a bit hard and he heard the gravel pinging in the wheel wells.
A quarter mile on he pulled over and just sat there with the engine running. “Damn it,” he said.
When he came back into the little town he could see the shades were down at the post office and he checked his watch and then looked at the shades again. The woman’s car was still in the lot and he pulled in next to her and then went up the stairs. It took her a minute to pull back the shade and then undo the lock. “Oh, hi,” she said as he came into the small office. A little counter where she sat with the sorting room behind and about twenty wooden slots on the opposite wall for mail.