Annie took Ernie’s plate and wiped the counter. “How many times I got to tell you, Ern?”
“What?”
“You hassling customers.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He wiped his mouth and threw the napkin on the plate. She couldn’t tell if he was joking or just dumb. She cleared off all the abandoned plates. When she reached the end of the counter, she pulled a hundred dollar bill off a coffee cup. She snapped it tight and held it up to make sure she read the zeros right.
“Where’d you get that?” Ernie asked.
“That kid left it.”
“What kid?”
She folded the bill in her pocket. “The one sitting here drinking coffee, that’s who.”
Ernie shrugged, jammed a toothpick between his teeth. He is dumb.
Annie could see the kid through the humidity-streaked windows. He crossed the street. No luggage. No backpack. And in no hurry.
III
Tea was a full sensory drink, just not Waffle House tea. Drayton had been in Europe for the past century and developed an appreciation for Earl Gray. But now he was in Charleston, South Carolina, the breadbasket of the South. He figured if Americans could make decent tea, it would be in the South where a plantation was within walking distance. The Waffle House waitress couldn’t hide her smirk when he’d asked for Earl Gray. She offered him sweet tea. An abomination. Drayton ended up staring into a mug of coffee, instead.
Annie had worked at the Waffle House for six months. She was a big reason Drayton was there, she just didn’t know it yet. That would come soon enough. Drayton made the mistake of looking at her when she filled his cup and she was quickly drawn in. He didn’t try to mesmerize her. The simple-minded did it to themselves. He dropped the temperature around her to break the trance. It was a simple energy trick he learned centuries ago. His body became an energy sink, absorbing vibrations from the molecules around him. He could become an instant blizzard with a thought. Or a ferocious fire if he gave the vibrations back.
Drayton wanted to reach the coast by sunrise. He encountered a little problem with Ernie. Sit down. Forget. Ernie didn’t hear Drayton’s thoughts, he felt it. Ernie did like everyone who felt Drayton’s thoughts. He sat down. He forgot.
When day broke, Drayton was somewhere south of Charleston on a dirt road watching the sun rise above the wetlands. The light danced in the murky water that wandered through the reeds. Mosquitoes landed on his arms and probed his midnight skin for blood, finding none. Maybe he started his existence with white skin, he couldn’t remember that far back. Either way, centuries of exposure to the sun had blackened his flesh. No matter what color it was or had become, there had never been blood under it.
It took six months to walk from Mt. Hood to the Lowcountry, but it wasn’t exhaustion that weighed on Drayton. Blake Barnes was insane, no doubt. His personality was split in two, one side feeding on the other. He heard voices and couldn’t take it. Maybe if Blake lived another couple hundred years he would’ve understood his insanity. His thoughts would’ve died out with understanding. After all, it took Drayton two hundred years to understand his own dysfunction and find peace. Humans didn’t have that luxury.
Drayton didn’t murder Blake Barnes. He only took the last few moments of his life. He showed no prejudice – fat, skinny, black, white, republican, democrat – he took from them all. They often mistook him for the Angel of Death, but Drayton wasn’t sure what he was. Maybe he was Death and no one told him. He just knew he’d lived so long he couldn’t remember when, where, or how his life began. Or why.
Tell my family I’m sorry.
Drayton didn’t have to honor Blake Barnes’ request. There was a time when he ignored all last requests but figured he owed his victims something for taking the last of their life, didn’t he? He hated to call them victims, but that’s what they were; they were all victims. The essence he craved was a silky energy that penetrated every human being. He could absorb it just being near them, leave a man, woman or child an empty shell. It wasn’t like the old days when he tore out their throats and devoured them as they begged and pleaded. Back then, he ignored them, even laughed at their helplessness. That was how the whole vampire legend started. But Drayton didn’t have fangs or hide from crosses. He didn’t know what he was. He only knew he craved the human essence. But now he only took it from their last breath.
Even still, they were all victims, whether Drayton thanked them for their involuntary gift or not. He honored requests for a reason. Atonement. But if he got honest, drop dead on your knees honest, he did it because he wasn’t really sure what happened to the victims after he took their essence. If Drayton died like them, would he go there, too? He wasn’t human, not really. But did he have a soul? And if there was a God, like a bearded man looking down from heaven, Drayton figured he would have plenty to atone for. There wasn’t a lawyer alive that would defend him. Nor should they.
Drayton didn’t really care if there was an afterlife. He’d sent millions of people to the other side and had yet to see evidence of heaven or hell. If there was, so be it. He didn’t ask to be born. He didn’t want to live and live and live. He didn’t atone so that he could go to heaven or avoid hell. He atoned because he believed there was a balance in the universe. He atoned because that was the order of things.
When the sun had fully risen above the horizon, Drayton started down the dirt road. About noon, he was near his destination. A mud-spattered truck roared past him, close enough the side view mirror nearly clipped his ear.
Almost there.
IV
Aaron Towgard buzzed the dumbfuck walking down the road with the mirror. Came a little close, thought he might’ve hit the guy. He didn’t want to kill the asshole, just fuck with him. Dipshit looked lost so why not?
That happened first thing that morning. Now it was almost 1:00. The hunting dogs were boxed in the back. Aaron’s little brothers fought over the radio. He didn’t have time to take any of these idiots home. He was told to pick the check up at noon and not a minute later. He’d dicked around all morning and now he was fucked.
He about took out a line of mailboxes thinking of an excuse to tell his old man, but then he turned the corner and, what’d you know, there was ole Bo closing up the mailbox. Today was his lucky day. Bo always managed to avoid Aaron at school, but there was nowhere to hide this time.
Aaron locked up the front tires and stopped inches from the mailbox. Bo jumped in the ditch, falling against a pine tree. The dogs were yapping. “Shut up!” Aaron stepped out of the truck. His brothers started climbing out. “Get back in the truck.”
Aaron pushed his long, sweaty hair under his hat. “Hand me the check, Bo.”
“It’s in the box.”
“I know where it’s at, you shithead. Hand it to me.”
“If you want the check,” Bo said, “you know where to get it. I’m no delivery boy.”
“You’re a delivery boy if I say you are.”
Bo plucked his white t-shirt nervously, then started back down the private drive.
“I’ll let the dogs loose,” Aaron said. “They’ll give your horses’ a run all day. They ain’t going to make it long in summer heat like this, you know.”
Aaron was talking straight. How many times had they snuck on their property to fuck with them horses? Shit like that was fun.
“What?” Bo turned, put his arms out. “You want me to come over just to hand you the check?”
“Disrespecting me is disrespecting my daddy. You don’t want to piss off big daddy.” He jabbed at the mailbox. “Now deliver the mail, fucknut.”
Bo heaved a stick into the trees, cursed under his breath. He yanked out an unstamped envelope and slapped it in Aaron’s hand. “Erica wouldn’t be impressed.”
Bringing up Aaron’s ex-girlfriend hurt worse than a boot to the nards. Bo knew that. He also knew it was better to leave a hornet’s nest alone but sometimes you just wanted to see what was insi
de. Aaron snatched his skinny wrist before he could turn away.
“This got nothing to do with that whore.”
Bo tried to pull away. Aaron yanked and twisted in one fluid motion, throwing Bo into the truck. He cranked his arm up his back and ground his face into the muddy hood. The horn blared. Aaron’s little brothers bounced on the seat.
“You’re a little bitch.” Aaron slapped the crumpled envelope on Bo’s face. “The next time you ruin my check I’ll take the change out of your ass.”
He tossed him on the road. Bo wiped the mud off his lips and started to get up. Aaron planted his boot in the middle of his chest.
“You get your jollies from this?” Bo said.
Aaron grabbed Bo’s flailing hands and pulled him against the bottom of his boot like stretching a bow. He snerked phlegm to back of his throat and let a snotwad hang off his lip. Bo shook his head side to side. The tobacco-speckled hocker rolled off in slow motion, stretching on a slimy string. Bo twisted and squirmed. Aaron pulled tighter, dropping the payload on Bo’s shaved head.
“Let’s have some jollies,” Aaron said.
He was all set to pull Bo up by his ear. Aaron could swing him around like a doll all day long because shit like that was fun. But then his stomach tightened. An involuntary knot twitched inside, like the feeling he got when his daddy stormed red-faced into his room.
The dogs felt it. Something was in the woods. Maybe Annie was coming down the drive with a rifle. Was she hiding in the trees? He rubbed his chest, could feel the crosshairs on him.
“Who’s out there?” Aaron walked to the edge of the road, looked through the trees. “Annie? If you out there, I wasn’t going to hurt him. Bo just got a little mouthy. Come on out.”
Bo stood with a big muddy print on his white shirt, looked dumbly past the truck. Someone was a hundred yards down the road. It was the guy Aaron buzzed first thing that morning. Each step he took shook the knot in Aaron’s stomach that was now the size of an orange. Cold sweat broke across his forehead and the knot broke open like a foul egg, spilling fear.
Aaron puked his breakfast all over the road. Grits and eggs and gravy splattered like a bucket of mud. He put his hands on his knees, strings of spit draining in a puddle of vomit. He puked until there was nothing left but thick, green slime. His little brothers didn’t honk the horn. They didn’t tell him to get up and kick the guy’s ass. The dogs didn’t make a sound.
A well worn pair of boots stopped inches from his fingers. Aaron wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Still on his knees, he rose up straight and proud. It wasn’t no guy walking down the road, it was just some black kid. Couldn’t be no older than a sophomore.
“Who the fuck are you?” Aaron said.
“You should go home and rest.”
“You ain’t no doctor.” Aaron spat vomit-flavored snot. “What you are is lost. And you got no business here, so get on your way.”
The kid looked up into the trees as if reading a street sign. “This is where I’m going.”
He spoke with a strange dialect, like he’d mixed Spanish and good old American. But underneath it was a Southern flavor – the twang of home-cooked country talk – just diluted many times over.
“You mistaken, son,” Aaron said. “This ain’t your stop. This is nowhere you want to be.”
Aaron slowly straightened his hat. Nothing made a sound, not the dogs or bugs or wind or nothing. Aaron would show them want an enforcer does in a situation like this.
Aaron feigned sluggishness when he stood and wiped his mouth. He turned like he was going to the truck. With his hand already up, with his hips turned, he would strike like a cobra. In a single, swift motion, he balled his fist and started toward the kid like a power hitter, would knock this smug dickweed over centerfield.
But his hand didn’t move like it was supposed to. His momentum stopped. The muscles along his back tightened like 240-volts had been rammed up his ass.
It was moments later that he could see again. He was on his knees, square in the puke. The kid had him by the wrist, still next to his ear. The kid gripped him by the neck with the other hand, pinching nerves that screamed to the bottom of his feet. Panic swept through Aaron’s belly, slamming into his balls.
“Get along, boy,” the kid said.
When Aaron could feel his legs again, he stumbled to the truck. His brothers stared out the window, mouths hinged open. He put the truck in gear and trenched the sandy road on his way out of there. A rubbery nutsack swung on the back bumper. In the rear view mirror, he was white and pasty. And the truck was starting to stink something fierce.
V
The deer hunter was stepping on a boy in the road. Drayton knew a thing or two about hunting. He didn’t need a bow, knife or rifle. Come, fear. Fill the belly. The deer hunter’s body obeyed, dumped adrenaline into the blood stream. Ernie just lost his appetite, but Drayton pushed harder on the deer hunter. Drayton could bring a cold killer to tears. A redneck teenager? He’d shit himself.
He was throwing up bile. Drayton showed mercy, let him up. Maybe it was a mistake. The boy didn’t think of it as mercy, but an opportunity. He wasn’t accustomed to losing a fight. But like most street fighters, he believed real pain was meted out with knuckles. Pain was delivered through the nervous system. Why swing a fist when pressure was more direct?
Drayton squeezed the boy’s radial nerve below the elbow. The shock overwhelmed him. Drayton gave him time to recover, then pinched his brachial plexus near the base of his neck and introduced him to raw pain. He was a believer after that, at least his shorts were, and spun his fat tires to get away.
The victim picked at his shirt on the side of the road, breathing through his mouth while the obnoxious muffler faded down the road. He was one of Blake Barnes’ boys.
“Who are you?” Bo asked.
“Drayton.”
“You know where he’s going, Drayton? He’s going right back to his daddy’s house and tell him everything.” Bo picked at his shirt faster, not letting it fall to his chest before he picked it again. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I appreciate you showing up and everything, but you just pissed off a big dog. I ain’t shitting.”
“I’m looking for a place to stay.”
“I, uh…” He studied Drayton’s face, the thin lips, and deep, black eyes. He couldn’t remember what he was saying. Drayton took the opportunity to calm the boy’s nerves with a thought, to slow his heart and cool his sweat glands. When he stopped picking his shirt, Drayton looked away.
“Your home is a bed and breakfast, is it not?” Drayton asked.
“Uh.” Focus returned. “We haven’t had anyone stay in a year, but yeah.”
“Today’s your lucky day.”
Bo looked him up and down. “You live around here?”
“I’m afraid I’m from out of town.”
“You visiting family or something?”
“I could use a place to lay my head,” Drayton said. “If I could see your quarters?”
Bo drifted back into his eyes, again. Drayton looked away, repeated the question. Bo shook his head, then nodded. He started down the shady drive, toeing the strip of stringy weeds growing between two sandy tire tracks. They walked for a full minute before they reached the end. Bo suddenly turned around.
“Thanks for what you done back there.” He walked backward, stuck out his hand. “My name is Bo.”
Drayton considered his extended hand, thought twice, then shook it. His hand felt cold as well water in December. Bo shook back, had a strange look melt on his mug but didn’t comment. He wiped his hand on his leg and walked around the bend. An old house sat on columns of brick pillars, the white paint peeling off the walls. Brown fences, paint peeling just the same, were beyond the house and several paddocks filled with horses. Massive crape myrtles with sinewy, peeling trunks grew in the open, pink blooms poking through thick layers of Spanish moss. Further back, live oaks reached out from the surrounding trees, their branches ancient and flexin
g. There was a barn to the left. A wooden fence stretched between the barn and the house, a few of the boards hanging. Drayton dragged his feet through the tall grass. The smell of horse manure filled the humid air.
“Listen, I got chores,” Bo said. “You can go wait on the porch and get out of the sun if you want. Mama will be home any minute. She’ll get you set up in a room.”
Bo went inside the barn. A tractor sputtered. An old quarter horse stuck his head out of one of the stalls, sniffed the air as if feeling Drayton’s eyes on him.
The frilly curtains dropped on one of the house windows. They were faded, almost yellow and nearly transparent. A shadow passed inside. Drayton climbed the wide steps to the porch wrapping around the house and peered inside. Someone moved to the kitchen in the back, disappeared around the corner. Drayton sat on one of the rocking chairs weaved from grapevine and bended saplings beneath a ceiling fan that pushed the heat around but not the flies.
All the horses were looking at him while they ground straw side to side between their teeth.
VI
There was a boy sitting on the porch talking to Bo. Annie thought he looked familiar, but she hadn’t slept yet. This time of day played tricks with her eyes, so Annie stopped the car and viewed the kid like she did everyone. A potential threat.
She threw the car in park and let the air-conditioner blow on her face. The car was the only reprieve from the South Carolina heat. She adjusted the vents, listening to the belts squeal and studying the slow-rocking boy. His skin was unnaturally dark. Most African-Americans were brown-skinned. This kid was pure black. He didn’t look up, just sat rocking in her grapevine chair.
Bo ambled through the long grass pointing back. Annie turned the car off and got the groceries out of the back seat, handing a bag to Bo. “He’s looking for a room,” Bo said.
“Where’s his parents?”
The Drayton Chronicles Page 2
