An antique station wagon idled in the parking lot of
the Warwick Falls lookout. A patch of frost was melting from the outside in on
its periwinkle roof. Mist rose from the
gorge below and swirled around it, shrouding the tail lights, which looked like
waspy red spirits. Its headlights beamed across the wet dirt road and painted
dim yellow circles on a rock wall. Through the windshield, sluggish silhouettes
ducked and swiveled their heads.
The man behind the steering wheel
reached under his seat and retrieved a nickel-plated .38 revolver. The woman
next to him stared at it. The corners of her mouth turned down in a symphony of
wrinkles.
“How sure are you?” she asked.
“’Bout what?” His eyes glimmered as if
someone had recently added a coat of lacquer to them.
“About them things in your shirt pocket.”
“Well, if it was just me, I s’pose I wouldn’t
be all that sure at all… but there’s you saw ‘em too.”
“Yeah, I know I saw ‘em, but who’s to
say I didn’t hear something different from what you heard?”
“Did you?”
A lone tear grew fat in the corner of
her left eye and spooled down a groove in her cheek. It nestled itself in a
crease in her chin.
“They’re Tommy Boy’s buckeyes and you
know it. Here,” he said, fishing them out of his breast pocket and displaying
them on a flat, trembling hand. The buckeyes had a polished gleam from ritual
handling. The beige circles on the tops of them were both tilted towards her as
if they were studying her. “You see that little cross-shaped nick on the one?
He used to say that it was God’s buckeye. He’d put it on the table at the last
hand of every poker game and roll it towards the pot.”
The woman chuckled painfully, her face
twisted up like a tree knot.
“Yep. He sure did… I don’t remember him
ever losing, neither. I just don’t feel right about ‘em. We were both there at
the funeral. He was buried with ‘em, folded up in his hand. It doesn’t seem
well that they ended up on your nightstand all suddenly.”
“One of ‘em’s God’s buckeye. That’s what
he always used to say. I think it was God what left ‘em with us, Carole.”
“Mayhap he did.”
He brought his spotted hand up to her
cheek and fingered her ear ring. It swung like a pendulum for a long time. He
watched it—watched her. Then he returned his palm to the weapon in his lap.
Carole leaned over herself and rummaged
through her purse. The seatbelt cut into her floral dress, underlining a plump
ridge of skin which drooped over the one already hanging from her waistline.
Sitting back up, she brought a cell phone with her and stared at it for a
minute or two. With a shaking finger, she swiped the gray band at the bottom of
the screen. Nothing happened. With her second try, the lock icon twitched
toward her yellowed nail and then settled back into place.
“Do you know how to work this thing,
darlin’?” she asked.
“You gotta plant your finger directly on
the lock and drag it to the right.”
She nodded with a flimsy smile and,
moving as precisely as a watch maker, lowered her finger once more onto the
lock. This time, she managed to draw it completely to the right. A brightly
colored background picture appeared behind a number of application icons. It
was of Carole and her husband standing on either side of a young woman in a
forest green sweater with big white letters, MSU, stamped on the chest.
“Evelyn…” she said. “I don’t know that I
can do a thing like this, Nick. What do you think she would say? Lord, what might she tell her little boys?”
“She can’t tell what she don’t know,”
said a voice like river rocks falling into a tin bucket, coming from the
console—the spot where Nick had placed the buckeyes. “No one ain’t never gonna
find out. You mark me good, Carole. You’ve got some business needs attendin’,
and you ought not to shrug of attendin’ it on account of it’s God’s work. The both of you ha’ been
chosen.”
Carole froze, blinking rapidly at Nick
who was twisting the chamber of the revolver with his thumb and gazing at the
rock wall across the road.
“…Did you hear ‘im, hon’?” he asked
without moving.
Her eyes shot down to the buckeyes. They
were resting on a mound of pennies, shining dully in the grey light.
“I sure think I did.”
“Well, I think that solves it. Let’s not
be too ceremonious about all this,” he said, popping his door open and setting
his foot on the gravel outside. “I’ll go’n and get the car ready—you call the
tow man. Remember how Evelyn set it up for you? Just press the green
phone-shaped button on the bottom-left ‘n’ press the word, ‘roadside’. Then,
all you gotta do is say you and your husband done popped a tire out on route
43, you’re parked out by the falls, and ain’t any spares in the trunk. Okay?”
“Okay,” she said, eyes wide.
Nick nodded and pulled himself onto his
feet, briskly shutting the door once he was all the way out. She heard his crunching
footsteps trail around to the trunk, then a mechanical pop and a rusty squeal.
A flicker down in the console caught her attention. One of the buckeyes—the one
with the cross-shaped nick—had tumbled away from its brother.
“Who’s in there? Is that you, Tommy
Boy?” she asked.
There was no answer for several minutes.
Then the trunk slammed shut. She flinched and the phone slipped from her hands
into the narrow space between her seat and the passenger door.
“Hell!” she grunted, looking through the
back window at Nick.
He was holding a bowie knife with a
brown leather handle close to his chest and peering around the car at the back
left tire.
“Call the tow man, Carole,” said the
buckeyes. There was a touch of anger in the voice. The pennies rattled.
The voice made her go rigid, jowls
quivering, and before she’d heard the last word, Carole had jammed her hand
down past the seat cushion and scrabbled around, sweat sprouting along her
burgundy hairline. At last, her plastic nails ticked against it. She yanked it
out and held it up to her face. With her thumb, she brought up the home screen
once more and pressed the green phone icon. “Roadside” was the third number on
the list, below the words, “Ev” and “Home”.
She tapped it and held the phone to her
ear, looking dazedly at the buckeyes which now sat nestled in individual
divots, surrounded by respective calderas of pennies. A far away ringing purred
in her ears until a click sounded and a young man answered on the other end.
“Plateau Towing. How can I help you?”
“Hi,” she said, throat crackling as if
it were made of dry leaves. “Me and my husband just popped ourselves a tire out
on 43 by the falls and we don’t have any spares. Do you think you could send
out a truck to help us?”
“Well, sure we can, ma’am. That’s not a
problem at all. I’ll come out, myself. How’s that sound?”
To her rear, there was a meaty thud
followed by a slow hissing sound. The car began to tilt and sag towards the
place where her husband was helping himself back to his feet.
“Uh… that sounds just fine. When can we
expect you?”
“Our shop is actually only fifteen
minutes away from there. You just sit tight and I’ll be up in no time. We’ll
get your car hooked up and have her back down here before nine.”
“Alright, then. We’ll be waitin’ for
you.”
“Good deal,” he said. “I’m hopping into
the truck as we speak. See you in a bit.”
Carole’s throat began to close. She
swallowed and cupped her palm around the drapes of skin under her neck.
“Hey, son? Mind if I ask you a question
real quick?”
“Sure. Whatcha got? Shoot.”
“What’s your name?”
Outside, Nick was panting and swatting
at the knees of his khakis. The overcast sky combined with the swirling cloud
constantly spuming up from the falls caused deep shadows to fall over his brow,
making his eye sockets look empty.
“My folks dubbed me Martin. You can call
me Reds, though. That’s what everyone calls me.”
“And why’s that?” she said, continuing
to watch her husband.
He had taken a few steps away from the
car toward the railing that sat just above the falls. The upstream breeze
blasting out of the gorge tousled the thin band of cotton still clinging to his
scalp. And the leather handle of the knife jutted through the slit in the back
of his tan tweed jacket.
“Oh, well I’m a little embarrassed to
say…” Reds mumbled.
“Go on,” Carole said, her voice
jittering.
“Well, it’s just a name that stuck with
me. I used to have a chain-smoking habit—two packs a day; cowboy killers—and
one night, I was drinking heavy at this party I wasn’t supposed to be at. My
mom caught wind and came out looking for me. She had just found the house I was
at and was coming in to give me a piece of her mind when I made the stupid
mistake of lighting a cigarette backwards and taking a power-drag. Let’s just
say that it didn’t end well for anyone involved and I had to buy my mom a new
blouse afterwards.”
“My word. Well, I guess we all end up
bein’ infamous for somethin’ or another,” she said.
Over the phone, she heard the tow truck’s
engine grumble and huff as it began its trip up into the mountains.
“Yeah. I don’t mind it too much, though.
I kind of like the name. It seems to suit me. Anyway, I should get off the
phone before I wreck this thing but, before I do, what’s your name? I don’t
think I caught it.”
“Oh, me?” she asked, raising her
penciled-on eyebrows. “I’m Carole, sweetie.”
The tow truck rattled, navigating the
beaten dirt roads up the mountain. Reds, leaning over his steering wheel,
struggled messily with the wiper switch so that he could rid himself of the
sheet of fog that had plastered itself across the windshield. The old blades
whined on their servos, doing little to improve visibility and painting streaks
of dirt in a familiar arc.
He rocked away into his seat, smacked
his skull against the back window.
“Fuck!” he growled, reaching blindly
toward the console. He plucked the receiver of the CB radio out of its holster
and whipped it toward his face. “You should’ve washed Josie-May when you were
done yesterday, Daniel… dunno how in the hell you expected me to drive her like
this, knowing the fogs were coming. By the way, remind me why you took the
headrest out of here?”
A slushy, Alabamian drawl crackled out of
his hand.
“Take ‘er eathy, Redth. I’ll make it up
to yuh, bah y’ a thix-pack.”
“Kiss my ass, pumpkin. If I make it back
down, I’ll hold you to that.”
“Alraht, mayn. Be thafe up thur. And
dontchu be cawlin’ me punkin.”
Reds smirked, swaying side to side as
the truck rocked over damp roots and kicked-up clods of dirt.
“You want me to call you Fiddlesticks,
then?”
“Over ‘n’ out, jackath.”
There was a momentary shriek of static
as the radio cut off and then the cabin was quiet. Reds leaned forward again to
replace the receiver. As he leaned back, he snuck a hand into his pocket and
removed a cigarillo with a blonde wooden tip and a golden foil label wrapped
around it. He gripped a loose piece of its cellophane packaging between his
teeth and liberated it with a careless sideways jerk. Tucked into the seat by
his belt buckle was a grimy yellow lighter which he easily found and flicked
alight under his new fare. His fat red lips, looking like the split back of a
jumbo shrimp, levered the cigarillo as he stoked it.
Squinting through roiling ribbons of
smoke, he found himself coming up on a black wooden sign. Just a few meters
beyond it, he saw the gravel lot and the couple’s old station wagon. The
husband was tall and pale, his jacket swaying from his sharp, bony shoulders as
he took a few ambling steps away from the edge of the lookout. As Reds backed
up to their rear bumper, the man suddenly appeared panicked. He jerked the
driver door open ducked his head down into the car. When he stood back up, he
was dropping something into his shirt pocket, patting it with a gnarled hand.
“Alright, Carole. Let’s get this over
with,” Reds said to himself, killing the engine with a punctuated flick of his
wrist. He took a long, slow drag from the cigarillo; the glowing tip brightened
to a nuclear yellow.
As he hopped out of the cabin, the sound
of the falls bore down on him. Their vomitous din was amplified against the
rock wall, causing the noise to wash over him from both sides. Evergreens hung
forlornly above him, deep and lush green, sacrificing none of their hue to the
miasma of cold spray and fog.
“Hey, glad you made it,” the old man
said, his face twitching a couple of times before pulling itself up into a
crinkled smile.
“I’m glad I made it, too.” He chuckled
and held his hand out. “I’m Reds.”
At first, the old man stood still,
looking sullenly at his shoes, hands tucked into his pockets. Then, as if
receiving a delayed transmission from a distant satellite, he jerked forward
and clasped Reds’ hand just as he started pulling it back. The senior’s palm
was raspy and loose as if it would shed at any moment.
“Name’s Nicholas,” he said, barking the
first syllable out as if he were coughing.
“Nice to meet you, Nicholas. I take it
that’s Carole in the car?”
Again, the Nicholas seemed not to
register what he had said. He simply stood and gazed at him, eyes like glittering
pits. The sun had begun to rise but the burly grey clouds all but obscured it.
Where it hung in the sky, it seemed like someone had taken a giant eraser and
scrubbed in a circle slightly brighter than its surroundings.
“Sir?” Reds said
“Huh? Oh. Yeah, that’s my wife, Carole.”
The old man shambled around and bent over, signaling with his hand for her to
get out of the car.
Carole stood slowly, looking somberly
from Nick to Reds. Her lips were pressed so tightly against each other that
they seemed to disappear into a bloodless horizontal line.
“Hello, ma’am,” Reds said.
“Hi,” she said. The word seemed to
whistle out of her throat.
The skirt of her dress swishing between her
legs, she trudged to a spot just behind her husband and placed a lizard hand on
his shoulder. Nick’s head drifted minutely in her direction and then came back
to Reds.
“So how’re we gonna do this?” he asked.
“All I’ve gotta do is hook your wagon up
to the back of my rig and then you two can ride up front with me. It’ll only
take a few moments.”
“Well, is there any way I c’n help you?”
As Nick spoke, his skin stretched thin over his cheekbones, drawing in dark
hollows below them. Fat, winding veins had popped out on the sides of his
forehead. A slick sheen stood out on his skin.
“No, I can handle it. Why don’t you two
stand back and enjoy the falls a bit while I string her up?”
Nick nodded and smiled appreciatively.
Reds rubbed the back of his neck and
shot a quick glance behind him, pulling the cigarillo out of his mouth so that
a delicate arc of curly smoke followed in its wake. When he looked back, he
staggered, gasping.
Nick had leveled the revolver at his
head.
“Hey, man, what’s… what are you doing
with that thing?”
“Beg pardon, son,” Nick said, sighing.
His eyebrows bunched in a lax sort of despair. “We’ve been chosen and so’ve
you, I’m afraid. It’s god’s work, what’s gettin’ done this morning. Now why
don’tcha just get on down to your knees ‘n’ close your eyes. I’m gon’ hafta
kill you now.”
Reds gaped at him, his lips trembling
like pink epileptic worms. Shadows seemed to shift like spiders over the old
man’s face. He tilted his head and motioned downward with the barrel of the
.38.
“Sir, why don’t we just put the gun
down? You don’t need to kill me. I’m sure this is just all a misunderst--“
“On your KNEES!” the old man screamed,
spraying him with specks of saliva. He cocked the hammer back with a trembling
thumb.
Reds dropped immediately, grimacing as
a sharp piece of gravel dug into his knee cap.
“Okay, okay. I’m on my knees. Let’s
just slow down and talk.”
“Sorry, boy. There won’t be any variety
of speech gonna save you. I’m afraid it’s outta all our hands.” He reached into
his shirt pocket and brought out the two buckeyes. Holding them out for Reds to
see, he continued. “These here belonged to an old friend of mine. His spirit is
alive in them—I’ve heard his voice comin’ directly out of ‘em. He says he’s
thirsty.”
Reds looked over Nick’s shoulder at
Carole, his eyes round with shock. She frowned at him and looked away toward
the falls.
“Carole…” he said. “You seemed like a
nice woman earlier on the phone. Don’t let him do this.”
“Don’t you say another word t’ my wife,
hear?” Nick said evenly, rattling the buckeyes.
She turned back and looked down at Reds.
Her eyes were red-rimmed and wet, but her face was slack, emotionless. Nick
held the buckeyes out to her while keeping his eyes and the gun trained on
Reds.
“Go on and take ‘em, dear. I think
Tommy-boy’s got somethin’ t’ tell you.”
Carole cupped her hands under her
husband’s. The latter loosened his ashy fingers and let them fall through. Eyes
rolling upwards, she held them up to her ear. Occasionally, she nodded and
mumbled assent.
“What’s he saying?” her husband asked.
The arm he held the gun with was shaking so badly that his fist began to
bounce.
She brought her hand away from her ear
and dropped the buckeyes. They skittered across the gravel, one bouncing and
skipping until it thudded into Reds’ leg. He looked down and noticed that it
had a small cross-like shape carved into it. Nick twisted around, mouth hanging
open.
“What in th’ hell’d you do that for,
Carole?!”
“I was just doin’ our lord’s work,” she
said raggedly, eyelids drooping.
“Wha—?”
Nick veered violently
forward and clipped his wife, then fell to the ground with her. She writhed sluggishly
under him like a drugged insect, pulling on his shoulders to see over him. The
bowie knife was buried so deeply in his back that only its handle was visible.
Reds dashed toward them and, planting a knee in the old man’s back, reached out
for the gun which had fallen right next to Carole’s head.
With a speed that he wasn’t expecting,
she snatched it and jammed it against his skull. Between them, her husband lay
still, eyes half-open and unblinking. The pupils had blotted out his hazel
irises entirely.
“Get up ‘n’ drag him off me. By the
ankles,” she said.
Reds, moving as carefully as he could
manage, obeyed her and crawled backwards until he was hovering on his haunches.
He took one of Nick’s ankles in each hand and duck-walked backwards, tugging in
short bursts. A maroon patch had begun to seep through the old man’s blazer and
bloom outward from the brown, segmented handle that stood like a monument
between his shoulder blades. When he had completely freed Carole of her spouse,
she sat up and gazed at him. He stood straight and gazed back.
“Are you going to let me live?” he said.
“I think so.”
“Can I have the gun, then?”
She peered dreamily down at it, hefted
it in her blue-crossed palm. The fog had thinned and the clouds had broken,
allowing spokes of ocher sunlight to dart down through the mist wafting over
and through the lookout railing behind her. Prismatic rings danced around her
head.
“I can’t give it to you.”
“Sure you can, Carole. I promise, I’ll
just take it and put it somewhere safe. We’ll get your husband into the truck
and go straight to a hospital.”
“That’s not gonna work, hun. I’ve still
got God’s work to do.”
“You think God would want you to do anything with that gun?” he asked,
taking a step toward her.
She closed her eyes and cleared her
throat.
Reds took two steps closer.
Carole’s eyes snapped open and she
shoved the gun into her mouth, the barrel clicking against her molars. He froze
and held his hands up, palms out.
“Don’t do it, Carole. You just need
he--,” he said as she pulled the trigger.
A confetti of grey matter and blood
spread out like a plume on the gravel behind her. The force of the bullet had
laid her on her back, her dress hiked up over the red-striped mound of her
stomach. Reds’ knees gave and he slumped onto his side, barely supporting
himself with his left arm. He surveyed the scene numbly, letting his eyes drift
over every detail, feeling almost calm somehow.
He heard something skitter across the
gravel to his right.
The buckeyes lay nestled together only a
few feet away. Reds stood up abruptly and knelt over them, scooped them into
his palms. They were bigger than they had been moments before. There was a
smear of blood on one of them. He studied it for a long time. Then he looked
back at his truck, began to walk toward it.
He climbed back into the cabin and
placed the buckeyes on the seat next to him. In the side mirror, he could still
see Carole’s body, arms and legs splayed out to the four corners. He heard a
faint crackling sound, followed by a familiar voice.
“Redth, what’th taykin’ yuh tho lowng?”
“Oh my god,” he said, suddenly looking
wildly about him. He leaned over and pulled the receiver up to his mouth.
“Something horrible has just happened. I need you to call the police right
now.”
“Yew thound a kahnda bad, buddeh.
What’th goin’ own up thar?”
“The people that called us are dead. One
of them almost killed me. Look, I don’t think I can fucking go into it right
now. Can you just get the cops?”
“Thay no more, mayn. Ahm callin’ ‘em
raght naow.”
“Okay,” Reds said.
He replaced the receiver and ran a hand
through his bristly hair. Through the windshield, he saw a white rabbit
scampering down the road along the rock wall. Up the way, a series of tree
branches snapped, a ways into the woods. The radio crackled to life again.
“Hay, Redth?”
He grabbed the receiver again and
depressed the white button on its side with a shivering index finger.
“What, Daniel?”
“Yew thould turn yer radio awn b’fore
yuh thart hayvin’ converthathions wiv’ folkth awn it.”
