The Front Porch Prophet (11 page)

It was silent on the killing ground. The acrid smell of cordite lingered with a richer, coppery aroma. A.J. heard the pounding of his own heart.

“Give me a reason to shoot you,” he said through clenched teeth. “Any reason at all will do it.”

The reprobate lowered his rifle. A.J. saw in his eyes a soul of darkness. He beheld an animal that deserved to die, yet he hesitated to shoot lest he become what he destroyed. The villain mistook what he saw in A.J.’s expression for a lack of resolve and began to laugh. A.J. couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Without conscious thought, he shot. The M-16 was on full automatic, and the man was cut to pieces. When it was over, Eugene came to pry the rifle from A.J.’s hands. He still had the trigger depressed, although the magazine was empty.

“Easy,” Eugene said. “Let me have the gun.” He removed the M-16 from A.J.’s hands and threw it down. He was not a man who was easily jarred, but there was no mistaking the fact that they had a mess on their hands.

A.J. sank down next to the prone, inert woman. She was staring straight up with fear in her eyes. Her lips moved silently. He wiped spittle mixed with blood from her chin. Her mind seemed to have disengaged from harsh reality, and A.J. thought that this, at least, was a small mercy. He bent his head down between his knees and vomited.

Eugene inspected the two who had succumbed to acute wood poisoning. There was no point at all in checking the third and not much left to examine anyway. He came and stood in front of A.J. and his mute associate. In a gesture of tenderness uncharacteristic of Eugene, he kneeled and gently fastened her jeans. Then he raised her to a sitting position and eased her onto the log beside A.J. He reached into the tent and brought out a blanket, which he draped over her exposed torso.

“Those boys are dead,” he said to A.J. “You swing a mean piece of wood.” A.J. was silent. He was in danger of departing reality and joining his log mate. Eugene saw this and grabbed his shoulders, shaking him. “Wake up, Babe Ruth. Don’t get weak in the knees on me now.”

A.J. blinked slowly a couple of times, then met Eugene’s gaze.

“Did you say the other two are dead?” he asked quietly.

“You can’t get any deader,” Eugene replied. “What I don’t get is who these guys are. Excuse me, were. There are some survivalists living on the other side of the mountain. I know
them.
They seem okay, and they buy a lot of beer from me. But I’ve never seen these three.”

A.J. viewed his handiwork. He had no idea what the next step was. He thought it odd that he felt very little remorse about killing the men. His only regret was that he had not arrived soon enough to save the young woman from suffering such trauma. He looked over at his trembling female companion.

“I think she’s in shock,” A.J. said. “It could kill her. We need to get her into town.” He leaned close to her ear. “Can you hear me?” She made no sound and continued to stare at the horizon. He looked over at Eugene. “I don’t think she’s going to be walking out anytime soon.”

“We’ll carry her,” Eugene said. “We don’t need any more bodies up here. They’re going to have to haul them out in a truck as it is.” He reached down and pulled the K-Bar knife from the sheath in one of the dead men’s boots and looked at the razor sharp blade. “These guys had all the toys,” he said. Then he chuckled softly. “Man, don’t you know they would be pissed if they knew they got wiped out by a guy with a baseball bat?” A.J. glared at him, and Eugene took the hint. “I’ll go cut some poles,” he said. “We’ll make a stretcher out of the tent.” He headed from the camp to find some suitable material. While Eugene was gone, A.J. dug around in the tent and came up with a shirt. The woman stiffened when he gently removed the remnants of her original.

“Easy, now,” he said. “You’ve had a bad day, but I’m not going to hurt you. Those people won’t bother you anymore. We just need to get you covered up.” She remained stiff but did not otherwise resist. It was like dressing a large doll. When he finished, he wrapped her back up in the blanket. “That’s much better. Just hang in there a little while longer. We’re going to get you out of here and take you to town.” She continued to sit motionless.

Eugene came back dragging two long saplings. He stripped them of branches and fashioned a workable conveyance using the tent plus the dead men’s bootlaces. When he finished, he viewed his creation and nodded in satisfaction.

“Are we ready?” he asked. A.J. looked at him for a long moment.

“How much prison time do you suppose I’ll get?” he asked, gesturing in the direction of the deceased.

“It was self-defense. You won’t get anything.”

“He
wasn’t self-defense,” A.J. said, pointing at the man he had shot. “I looked him in the eye and murdered him.”

“No, see, that’s where you’re wrong. He was about to blow you away, but you got him first.”

“That’s not what happened. You know it, and I know it.”

“Yeah, and nobody else knows it. So, if you’ll keep your mouth shut about that ‘looking him in the eye’ shit, everything will be just fine.” Eugene spoke in an exasperated tone. “I knew you were going to make a big deal out of this. I just knew it.”

“Well, damn, it
is
a big deal,” A.J. noted, gesturing at the carnage. “We won’t be dealing with Slim on this. There will be big boys involved. I better just tell the truth and hope they take the circumstances into account.” Eugene sighed.

“The only thing I hate worse than a hero is a stupid hero. If you hadn’t killed them, I would have. Now, quit worrying. And for Christ’s sake, let me do the talking when we get to town.” He squatted down in front of the woman. “Lady,” he said loudly, as if she were deaf, “we’re going to put you on this stretcher and carry you out of here. Nothing bad is going to happen.” He spread the makeshift palanquin next to her. She blinked, looked at Eugene, and screamed.

He was caught off guard and jumped back, tripping over his own feet and falling in the process. It would have been a comic display if the situation had not been so bleak. “Lady,
please
don’t do that again,” he said. She was sobbing quietly. A.J. put his arm around her shoulder to comfort her.

“Let’s get her out of here,” he said to Eugene. He stood and stepped behind her. He reached gently under her arms while Eugene got her feet, and they carefully positioned her on the litter. Without comment they raised their burden and began the long journey to less lethal climes. When they reached the top of the ridge, Eugene told A.J. to stop a moment, and he placed his end of the stretcher on the ground.

“I forgot my gun,” he said.

“Leave it,” A.J. replied, but it was too late. He watched in irritation as Eugene ran back to the campsite. He turned his attention to his remaining companion while waiting for Eugene’s return. He hoped she was going to be all right. For that matter, he held similar aspirations for himself. There were serious explanations due regarding the mountain man he had shot, and even if he could avoid too much trouble with the law on that score, there was still Maggie to deal with. She did not condone killing in any form, save a selection of flowering plants twice a year, and he was going to be hard pressed to explain the pile of victims, particularly the one he had diced with the automatic rifle.

Eugene came hustling back up the hillside, panting. “Got it,” he said. They resumed their journey to the land of the relatively sane, walking in silence for a while. Then Eugene spoke again.

“That was wild,” he said from his position on the rear. “I thought you were a bad son of a bitch that night in Sand Valley, but that was nothing. I am going to have to keep a closer eye on you. We don’t want this John Wayne shit to get out of hand.” It was one of Eugene’s most annoying habits to talk about subjects best left alone. He could home right in on the last thing in the world a person wanted to discuss and linger there indefinitely. It was a knack.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” A.J. replied.

“Took out three armed men with a ball bat,” Eugene continued with an admiring tone in his voice, oblivious to A.J.’s wishes. “Went through those boys like Sherman went through Georgia. That last one would have had you if I hadn’t distracted him.”

“I don’t want to talk about this,” A.J. repeated, wishing he had gone to Atlanta for participative water sports. A question occurred to him. “And what took you so long getting down there? Did you stop for a smoke? Maybe take a leak?” These were ungracious questions, but the niceties were temporarily beyond him.

“Everybody’s a damn critic,” Eugene responded. “What do you mean,
what took me so long?
I had to run down the back of the ridge, get the gun, run back up the ridge, and then come down to where the action was. You were supposed to wait. You almost got killed.”

“I couldn’t wait,” A.J. said.

“Yeah, I know you couldn’t wait,” Eugene replied. “But you should have waited anyway.”

“Quit talking,” A.J. said. They walked on in silence while he mulled what he intended to tell Slim. He was mentally reviewing and rehearsing, editing the story to its most explainable form. He was from the old school and deemed it important to present multiple murders in the best possible light.

“Bad son of a bitch,” Eugene muttered every so often, mostly to himself, replaying in his mind the charge of the bat brigade.

Upon reaching their vehicles, they decided to split forces; one would take their ward straight to Doc Miller while the other went to fetch Slim.

“Take her to Doc,” Eugene said. “I’ll go get Slim and meet you there.” It didn’t matter to A.J. A cloud of doom had engulfed him during the trip home. Any way he cut it, he knew he was screwed. He would go to jail, where he would have to kill some big, lonely felon named Sonny or Lukey in defense of his honor in the showers, and then he would never get out. He would lose his wife. She would divorce him and in her shame marry an insurance agent or an accountant, a city boy with soft hands and pale, bony legs who would move her to Atlanta and frown at her in rebuke if she ever exceeded her grocery budget.

They placed the woman into the cab of A.J.’s truck. She stayed put. Her catatonia had not improved appreciably, but there seemed to be a little more expression in her eyes. A.J. climbed into the driver’s seat and motored in the direction of the local equivalent of civilization with Eugene following along in his Jeep. When they reached town, A.J. made a beeline to Doc Miller’s. Doc practiced out of his home, and as A.J. pulled into the drive he turned and spoke gently to his passenger.

“I’m going to leave you here for about two seconds while I step in and get the doctor. Don’t get excited. Everything is going to be fine.” A.J. realized the words were ludicrous. It would be a long time before everything was fine for her. Still, he meant well, and that ought to count for something. He patted her leg in a reassuring manner and reached for the door. She grabbed his arm and held it tight. The move surprised him. He looked over at her. She held him in a hard stare, her brown eyes tearful and intense. The bruises on her cheek and jaw were livid.

“Where is…?” She didn’t finish but kept her gaze focused on her savior. A.J. had participated in some tough conversations in his time, but he figured this one was going to win, hands down. He wanted to avoid it altogether and had thought to leave her with Doc, who could break all the bad news in his own good time. Doctors were trained for that sort of task; it was why they got the big slice of pie. And A.J. knew he needed to be getting about the business of hiring a lawyer or fleeing to Mexico.

He sighed. Why, after all, should this part of the day be any better than the rest of it? It was not a reasonable expectation, and he knew he had been foolish to hope for respite from the fishing trip from hell.

“My name is A.J. Longstreet,” he began slowly. “My friend and I found you in the woods. I have brought you to the doctor to get checked out.” She continued to stare at A.J.

“Where is … Kenneth?” she asked quietly. She seemed to be missing some facts, and A.J. wondered if she had amnesia. He assumed the dead boy was Kenneth. Maybe he was her beau. A.J. was on ground he did not want to plow.

“Is that the guy you were with at the campsite?” he asked. She nodded. A.J. knew he couldn’t delay the inevitable. “I am sorry to have to tell you this, but he’s dead.” The words ricocheted around the truck cab like shrapnel. The girl blinked and recoiled as if slapped. A.J. watched her closely, wondering how much detail of the morning’s events would return to her now. His first concern was for her well-being, but running a distant and nearly inconsequential second was the flickering thought that a little friendly testimony couldn’t do him any harm.

“I remember … those men. Then Kenneth tried to run …” She whispered before stopping abruptly. “He tried to run,” she said again. A.J. had saved her honor and her life and had dressed her and hauled her down a mountain, but he really couldn’t say he knew her well. He could, however, identify
pissed
when he heard it.

“Don’t be too hard on him,” A.J. advised. “You ran up on three really bad guys. He never had a chance.”

“He tried to run,” she said, reemphasizing a point that was a kernel in her craw. “He was going to run off and leave me. To them. They shot him. Then someone tore my shirt off… and hit me.” Her hand strayed up to her bruised face and she winced when she touched it. “Then you told me we were at the doctor’s.” She spoke slowly, piecing the puzzle as she went. She seemed to be missing the big part after the backhand but before Doc’s driveway. A.J. supposed that the less she remembered, the better it would be for her. He would just have to rely on Eugene to back up his story.

“Let’s step inside and see Doc,” he suggested. Her face was turning an ugly shade of purple, and he was aware of several scratches on her chest that needed attention.

“I don’t feel like I’ve been raped,” she said, almost vacantly. She pulled the front of her shirt away from her body and briefly inspected her chest. “All bruised up and scratched,” she said, as if she were commenting upon apples down at the fruit stand. She looked over at A.J. “My shirt was ripped off. Now I have this one on. I should have been raped, but I’m not. I should be dead, but I’m not.”