Authors: Bret Lott
Her skin was a beautiful gold in the light from the fire. Her makeup was all down by her eyes, like in the picture of her, but now there was no duct tape.
Mom.
I reached up to her and felt as much pain as when I’d woken up in the hospital, only this down below my mouth instead of the back of my head, and I let my tongue, fat and hot, go to my jaw, felt three or four loose teeth, and I was cold, my feet granite blocks, and I tried to move them.
They wouldn’t, and I heard the sound of a heavy chain, pushed myself up on my elbows.
“Huger,” Mom said, and touched at my jacket, pulled it a little tighter to my neck. “You don’t get up. You just rest.”
“Huger,” Unc said from my right, “you just lay still.”
But I was looking at my feet, at the leg irons around my ankles, the chain between them spiked into the ground.
“You’d be surprised the sort of things we got on hand down to the station,” Yandle said.
I turned to his voice. Mom touched at my jacket again, then my forehead, my shoulder.
Past her on the other side of a small fire sat Yandle on the tail of a Ram 2500 four-by-four. Beyond it, barely visible for Cleve Ravenel’s truck, sat Patrick and Reynold’s Dodge. Yandle: perfect trim mustache, crew-cut hair.
So it was Cleve Ravenel, the white-haired fat doctor who’d turned too quick to his name, scared. Cleve Ravenel, the man whose e-mail trash Unc had figured out to go through. Cleve Ravenel, member of the Medical University Consortium.
But where was he?
Yandle’s arm was still in the sling, and with the other hand he made the gun again, shot me.
“Don’t say anything, Huger,” Unc said, and his voice sounded different, stuffed up. He sat a few feet to my right, facing the fire. His legs were up to his chest, his arms around them, holding on. He had leg irons, too, spiked to the ground, and in the flicker of light from the fire I could see his eyes were swollen shut, the skin split open between them, blood, black in the firelight, down either side of his face. He still had his hat on.
“Patrick broke his nose,” Yandle said. “Did a splendid job at it, too.” He paused, gave a little laugh. “Of course Leland here never saw it coming.”
Mom touched at my jacket.
We were just out in the woods somewhere. The fire’d been there a while, some big pieces of oak burned down, the canopy of live oak above us dull browns all moving for the flames.
I had no idea where we were.
Yandle took a long swallow off a bottle of beer. He had on jeans and boots, an army jacket, a holster and gun. “But about them leg irons,” he said, and burped. “Took those off an Oreo couple over to Gardens Corner, him black, her white. Got a call for a domestic one night—that’s a 214—and I pull up, see this naked fat white bitch coming down the porch off her trailer at me, them leg irons on and rattling, her waddling like a duck can’t shit. Turns out they use these
leg irons for bedroom fun, the two of them locking up and having at it, all the time their video camera on and recording the whole works.”
He shook his head, and Mom turned to him, said, “Just shut the hell up, would you, please? Won’t you just shut the hell up? Has anybody ever told you you’re just an asshole?” She touched my forehead, said, “Excuse my language, but I’ve been having to listen to this all day long, him and his police-boy stories. And I’m getting sick of it.”
“That was a comedy,” he went on, “that videotape, which we confiscated too, her with her fat turkey legs chained up and wrapped around his skinny nigger butt.” He was just talking, happy at the sound of his voice. “But it turns out they had a fight,” he said, “right in the middle of this Mandingo thing they got going, and he up and swallows
her
key. Took two days before that brother let loose of what he was holding, and I’m not the one went pawing through it, I tell you what. No sir. It was the brother himself we made do it.” He laughed again. “Now, they were losers. But
you
all.” He took another long swallow, emptied it, then pointed the bottle at me. “
You
all are one fucking loser family. The Dillards.” He burped again. “A blind man, a snot-nosed runt, and a cracker bitch to boot. One flicking loser family.”
“Don’t say a word, Huger,” Unc said again.
But I wasn’t sure if I even could. My tongue had swollen up, the whole left side of my face a sandbag, heavy and fat, and I reached up, touched it.
Nothing. It hadn’t swollen, far as I could tell. Just cold flesh, my cheek, my jaw.
“Don’t go to moving around,” Mom said. “Don’t try moving around or anything at all, Huger.” Then her chin started to quiver again, all this just like two days before.
But where were we? And why weren’t they just letting us go? Hadn’t Unc told them they could have the land?
“Unc?” I said, turning to him, my hand still to my dead jaw, the word out of me more a grunt for how big my tongue’d gone.
“Be quiet, boy,” Unc said again.
“Might ought to listen to that bad boy Leland Dillard,” Yandle said, and burped again. “He’s been around the block a time or two.” He laughed, pointed the empty bottle at him this time. “Looks like somebody done backed over him a time or two, too.” He cocked back his arm, and for a second I thought he meant to throw the bottle at Unc, just for fun.
But he didn’t, only shot it out into the woods behind us, and I heard the rush of small sounds through thick branches, the bottle caught a moment or two in the brush before the sounds stopped.
I sat up, though Mom didn’t want me to, and pulled myself to my knees, just like Unc. Mom didn’t have leg irons on but had a piece of rope tied to her ankle, the other end knotted into a spike, just like what Patrick and Reynold did with the dogs out in their yard.
And I could see way off into the woods behind the truck what looked like a lighted window, the barest glow of a lamp through a window the size of a postage stamp from where I was.
“So once the aforementioned cracker bitch little miss mother of the year here discovered my associates on the premises of Hungry Neck Hunt Club HQ”—Yandle laughed again, shook his head—“namely your fucking trailer, Leland, we had no choice but to apprehend the suspect rather than allow her to escape.” His words were sliding together now, a sound I knew was the first slip into being drunk from all those times we’d sat around and drank Colt 45 under the Mark Clark back home. Boxes were piled up in the bed of Ravenel’s truck, the boxes catching light now and again from the fire. Yandle reached behind him, pulled up another bottle from an ice chest there. He held it with the arm in the sling, screwed off the cap with his free hand. He sipped at it, wiped his mouth with that good arm. “Seems she’d seen us planting produce around the place, got all hot and bothered, and proceeded to knock shit out of Patrick and Reynold.” He took another drink. “Feisty bitch.”
“They were carrying equipment into the trailer,” Mom said to me, almost in a whisper. “Grow lights and spray bottles and hoses
and bags and bags of marijuana and—” She paused. “You know what I mean, grow lights?”
I nodded, closed my eyes for the pain again. Grow lights. Pot.
Weed. This was about
weed
?
Goods, of course. They were growing stuff out here. But where was here?
And now here came the doctor himself, Cleve Ravenel up out of the dark, his white hair orange in the light. He had on camos like every other time I’d ever seen him, and he was carrying another box, him breathing heavy. He set it in the bed, pushed it back to the others.
“The doctor of kind bud,” Yandle said. “If it hadn’t been for that little bastard over there falling down on top of me,” Yandle said, and nodded at me, looked back at Ravenel, “I’d be a little more service to you this evening, Cleve Ravenel, DKB. Doctor of Kind Bud.” Yandle slowly rubbed his shoulder, the neck of the bottle held between his thumb and first finger. “But life takes its turns, don’t it, DKB?” He laughed.
Ravenel shook his head. “Why the hell I have to deal with you is beyond my comprehension,” he said, and wiped at his forehead with the sleeve of his jacket.
He looked over at Unc. “I’m sorry about all this, Leland,” he said. “This taking you hostage and all. I’ll make good for you. I will.”
Unc said nothing, didn’t move.
“You got to deal with
me
,” Yandle went on, too loud, his eyes on Ravenel, “because I’m the only one knows who the hell to distribute to out thisaway, and who knows how to keep anybody wanting in from getting in out thisaway.” There was an edge to his voice now, something like what he’d used wanting to take charge of everything at the crime scene. “You fucking pasty-face doctor types living South of Broad wouldn’t know how to sell a kilo if a College of Charleston undergrad walked up and waved a thousand-dollar bill in your face. Only kind of work you’re comfortable with is putting on
your candy-ass latex gloves and giving a finger up the ass of some ninth-generation Pinckney.” He stopped, tipped back the bottle, took a swipe at his mouth with his sleeve again. “Truth is, I’d rather be out here and take billy-club hits at trailer trash any day. Any day, you fat motherfucker.”
Ravenel stood there, hands on his hips, his eyes on Yandle, staring hard at him. He tilted his head to one side the smallest bit.
I glanced at Unc. He hadn’t moved, eyes still swollen shut, those black streaks of blood like some kind of tattoo down his face.
Mom was sitting next to me now, and put her arms around me, held me to her like I was six. But it felt good with what seemed about to turn into something past the ugly it already was, all of it out of our hands not fifteen feet away.
“And so now we have three hostages who know precisely what the hell has gone on here on their own property,” Ravenel said. “Three hostages, and not a clue in the entire animal world what we’re supposed to do with them, because you and your gap-toothed little minions get it into your heads you’re going to go over and frame Leland Dillard, just in case your SLED pals figure out our little enterprise here.” He shook his head. “And then the woman shows up, and your boys decide to play take-the-hostage.”
“How was they supposed to figure she’d show up?” Yandle said, and put his hand with the bottle to the bed, steadying himself, or holding himself back, I couldn’t tell which. “How’s they to figure she’d pop up and screw everything to pieces? SLED’s showing up tomorrow morning, my man tells me, to go over every square inch of the whole club land, this backwater parcel even Leland Dillard forgets he owns. We ain’t got enough time to liquidate and tear it all down, I figure, so why not go ahead and plant evidence at Leland’s? Where’s the harm in hammering a couple more kilos into that old man’s coffin?”
Ravenel stopped shaking his head. “There you go, thinking again. That’s your first mistake.” He paused. “Big mistake.”
“You son of a bitch,” Yandle said, and before I could even think
of what I was watching, Yandle brought the bottle up from beside him on the bed, and broke it against Ravenel’s head.
I jumped, like I’d been shocked, my stomach knotted up and tight, and Mom squeezed down tighter on me, squealed, all in that second.
“Hold on,” Unc said, his voice cut low, just for us.
Ravenel gave a sort of failed groan, just a sound like the air in him had no choice but to leave, and fell, back and away from the truck.
Yandle pushed himself off the tail of the Ram, looked down at him. He still had hold of the bottle neck, the broken end ready now for whatever else might piss him off. He put his boot toe to Ravenel’s leg, pushed at it. Ravenel moaned, the sound almost nothing.
“Fucking doctors,” Yandle said. “The whole reason this whole thing is coming down—doctors.”
He turned to us, pointed the broken bottle at Unc. “If it hadn’t been for your doctor’s wife coming along and blowing away her hubby’s head, we could of been set up and operating here from now till kingdom come. But no. Doctors. Fucking doctors.”
Mom held me tighter, took in quick breaths, her face to my shoulder, and I held her.
“Good idea,” Yandle said. “Just close your eyes and pray this all goes away.”
Now came footsteps, a rush of them, pounding through brush and stomping toward us, and Reynold came into the firelight, breathing hard, his bald head like an orange bulb in the light, flannel shirt and jeans on. He bent to Ravenel, took in a breath or two, looked up at Yandle. Patrick showed up behind him, chest moving for the distance they’d run from the greenhouse. He had on a down vest over long underwear, jeans. He gave a big sniff through his nose, rubbed at it, shook his head.
He cut his eyes to Yandle, who’d sat back on the tail.
“This,” Patrick said, and took in another breath, “is a fucking twisted way to try and cover our ass.”
Reynold stood. “What in the hell did you do that for?” he said, and took in a breath, another. “This is the man who knows the judge, Doug. This is the man who knows the fucking
judge
. And you go and break a bottle on the son of a bitch.”
“Just shut up,” Yandle said. “Just shut the fuck up and let me think a minute.”
He gave what was left of the bottle the same throw he’d given the other empty, the bottle making the same small rush of muffled sounds, then leaned his head down, rubbed at his eyes with his free hand. Patrick said, “But we wasn’t supposed to brang down this kind of shit, Doug, we wasn’t supposed to go on and smash the fucking moneyman’s head.”
Yandle shot him a look, and the three of them started to arguing and whining at one another, hollering and pointing back into the woods to that lit window, then at each other, fingers to chests and pounding and how it all wasn’t supposed to fall like this.
And yet even with what I’d just seen, a bottle broken on the side of a man’s head, a body gone limp, I was thinking on what Yandle’d said just then:
We could of been set up and operating here from now till kingdom come
.
What did that mean? Weren’t Cleve Ravenel and his pals supposed to buy Hungry Neck? Wasn’t that what this was supposed to be about, our being back at nine o’clock so we could meet up with Thigpen and tell him whatever he and the people he worked for, those men who counted, wanted to hear? That Unc’d sell them the place, then get Mom back, be left alone to try and live the rest of our lives with all that’d happened?