A Living Grave

by Robert E. Dunn

From Moonshines to Nelson’s place is, at a normal pace, a fifteen-minute drive. It takes that long only because of the little bit of Branson traffic and the dark, twisted Ozarks roads. That night I was flying wildly over blacktop intended for meandering. Still, in the way that time has of dilating in crisis, the trip seemed to take hours.

  Within my little bubble of time I had a chance to think. Not feel, but actually think about my choices and life. It sounds strange to say after so many years of almost obsessively considering and reconsidering every moment of my life. But that obsession, I had been learning over the last couple of weeks, covered more than it revealed. All thoughts in times of crisis are prayers, silent wishes, bargains, or gifts of forgiveness to those we love. In my truck, running headlong toward violence—hoping for violence—I realized that I had never left the dirt of Iraq. My blood and life were still dripping from me and I was still praying silent thoughts of love to the people in my life.

  There was no God in my prayers. That kind of faith had long ago withered from my heart. It didn’t matter. Like humanity everywhere I offered bargains for the ones I loved. Since I didn’t have God to call on I grabbed onto someone equally perfect and distant. My therapist. I offered the one thing I had that she kept trying to get me to give up: anger. I promised, if my father was safe, if Billy would live and be well, if I could save Nelson for no matter how long, I would turn away from the dun-colored dust of Iraq. I would never again look on the muddy blots of my blood or watch the wisps of brown grit crawl across the sky. I would forgive Rice and Ahrens—even Reach.

  If.

  With my mind so deep into itself I almost missed the turn into Nelson’s drive. If I had, it would have changed everything. As it was, I turned headlong into the lights of an oncoming car, both of us stopping barely in time to keep from colliding. The quiet of relief lasted only a moment then, from the passenger side of the car, came a muzzle flash and the instant inward crashing of my windshield.

  I didn’t wait for a second shot. I slammed the gas pedal down, ramming the car, then forcing it back down the drive. The car fought back but my truck had both weight and torque on its side. I pushed it back through the smoke of its burning tires all the way back until it hit Nelson’s truck by the garage door. In the glare of my headlights I saw tiny glitter flashes coming from the backseat.

  Dauterive.

  Cutting my wheel to the left I opened the angle and let the car shoot off into the shrubs while my truck blocked the entire drive. That also allowed me to come out my door with the truck between me and the car.

  This time I came out with my 9-mil ready.

  They were ready as well. Two more shots finished off my windshield and passenger-side window. I dropped to the ground and into the gap between asphalt and the truck body. The driver had come out of the car. He was standing half-covered by the open door and turned toward the front of my truck. He was probably thinking I would come around that way because of the greater cover offered by the engine. It would have been smart, but I never claimed to be smarter than the bad guys, only meaner. I fired two rounds at his exposed leg. One hit the tibia just inches below the knee joint. He went down screaming.

  I didn’t linger to gloat. I rolled back and onto my feet, then crouched behind the rear tire. As soon as I stopped, the screaming guy started firing blindly under the truck. He was carrying a revolver—six and out. As soon as the hammer hit an empty chamber I darted for the bushes at the back of the truck.

  From where I was hidden I could see that both of the passenger-side doors of the car were open. I could hear the scraping of feet but could see no one. I had to stand.

  As soon as I did I caught the glint of sequins from Dauterive’s suit. The sparkle was moving. I took aim forward of the motion, at the gap between house, cars, and shrubs. It was the same spot from which I had been ambushed by the biker.

  Nelson, duct-taped hand and mouth, was shoved into that gap. Right behind him was Dauterive. Before I could fire there was a shot and a whining slug passing so close to my face I felt the heat of it. The screaming guy—I saw then it was Charlie Castellano—had reloaded and almost taken my head off. He was unsteady on one foot and leaning against the car, but I couldn’t let him have another chance. I double-tapped, two rounds, center mass and he was down for good.

  As soon as I fired, I moved. Half-a-dozen rounds sliced through the bushes behind me. Dean Morelli was not as old-school as his buddy. No revolver for him; he had an automatic. And I was betting from the way he was shooting he had an extended magazine. We were obviously two different kinds of shooters. He went for volume. I was more of a careful-aim kind of girl. The thing about volume shooters, they tend to be more easily distracted.

  Between the asphalt parking area and the shrubs were a line of ornamental stones. I picked one up. When I’d last moved, it was to my right, away from Castellano. Morelli would expect me to keep going that way so I tossed the stone into a big bush to my right while I kept low and went left back around the still-running car.

  Another flurry of rounds tore into the bush where the stone had landed. Morelli figured it out by the time I got around the car and Nelson’s truck. When I popped my head up he had turned and was almost ready. Almost wasn’t enough. I killed my second man that night with another two-round tap to the heart.

  That left me with one round in the chamber and four rounds left of my ten-round magazine. They were all reserved for Dauterive’s sparkling shirt. He was armed as well. His pistol was aimed not at me but at Nelson, who was leaning against the corner of the house.

  There was just enough light that I could see Nelson’s eyes, but not enough to read them. There wasn’t fear—I was sure of that—but neither was I getting relief. All I felt from him was sadness and I didn’t understand.

  “Perhaps we should talk, young lady,” Dauterive said without a trace of his peckerwood accent.

  “What’s to talk about?” I asked him.

  “The life of your fiancé,” he answered slowly and carefully.

  “There’s no discussion. If you harm him any further, I’ll kill you.”

  “That’s a fine way for an officer of the law to speak.”

  “That’s the wrong hope to hang your hat on,” I told him. “The law and I have kind of been letting each other down lately.”

  “I see,” he said and he looked to be thinking things over. “My situation here might seem a mite”—he thought about it for a second—“untenable. But I don’t believe that you will allow any harm to come to this fine and talented man.”

  “Try me,” I said. “If I let you take Nelson away, you’ll kill him anyway. So that’s not going to happen. If you shoot him, you die. If you put your weapon down, I’ll arrest you, for what it’s worth. You’re a lawyer with money and connections: arrest sounds like your best bet.”

  “I’ve never been one to play the best bet.” He smiled like he was the most charming man at a party full of pretty people.

  I shrugged slightly and said, “Untenable.”

  The smile slithered off Dauterive’s face, leaving only a cold void of a face. He said, “The man is dying already. Time ticking away. Let me be on out of here and you can have what time is left with no more pain. Just let me walk away. Tell me you will and I’ll take your word. I’ll put my weapon away and be gone.”

  Nelson pushed himself up from where he was leaning to stand fully on his feet. Even from where I was I could hear the wet grunting of his effort. The change in posture brought him more into the light. I could see the blood on the front of his shirt and smearing out from under the tape over his mouth. He looked at me. His eyes, I could see then, had the tired weight of ages and loss. Standing straighter, almost to attention, he then turned to stare down Bodie Dauterive.

  “If I gave my word,” I said, “I’d be lying. I’m not sure how many lies I have left in me.”

  “What’s he doing?” Dauterive asked me, ignoring what I’d told him.

  “I think he’s telling you to go to hell, Mr
. Dauterive,” I said.

  “No. He’s doing something.”

  I took a quick look again and saw that Nelson had indeed taken a step toward the gun. My first thought was to egg him on, to use it to put more pressure on Dauterive until I began to understand the look in Nelson’s eyes. He wasn’t looking at me. He wasn’t really looking at Dauterive. His gaze was straight ahead but he was looking at something no one else could see.

  It took a moment, but right then I put everything together. Nelson wanted to die fighting. So much of everything that had happened was just him trying to find a fight that would take his life. It took another moment to realize that the only way I could stop what was happening was to shoot Dauterive. Another moment of hesitation and Nelson was moving, rushing right at the gun pointed into his throat.

  Dauterive could have dropped his weapon. He understood that at the same time I knew I could shoot him. In the last fraction of a second he looked at Nelson and back to me. His choice was as cold as his face.

  We fired at almost the same instant. Bodie Dauterive put one bullet into Nelson and I put five into Dauterive.

  * * *

  It was a terrible wound but just a wound. Dauterive’s shot went into Nelson’s shoulder but like so many things, that is not like we imagine. From close range the slug all but tunneled through the muscle and bone, leaving a wide, bloody hole. An ambulance and Branson police sent by the sheriff’s department arrived quickly after that, while I was still cursing Nelson for what he’d done.

  Suicide.

  So much of what we’d gone through was about Nelson trying to die without pulling the trigger himself. I wanted to be angry but I couldn’t. What had I been doing with my life but killing myself slowly for the last ten years? Even sitting in the driveway, with Nelson bleeding onto me, I thought of Carrie Owens and the depth of her despair. I couldn’t be angry. Anger doesn’t fix anything. I’d learned that much.

  So I decided to drop the anger and to make a commitment to life. Nelson’s and mine.

  Three days later, as soon as I could arrange things, we married in the hospital chapel. Clare officiated. It was a noisy affair. Daddy was there to give me away. He’d reappeared to show me a file marked secret. It was only a few pages from a much larger file, but it told an interesting story. It had begun with a coincidence. Just as Reach had charged, I had indeed been connected to Sala Bayoumi. I had bribed him all those years ago to keep an eye on Rice. That wasn’t why he’d killed him. There was no clear reason for that. Rice just made himself an easy guy to hate. Maybe it caught up with him. The coincidence happened when my father met Bayoumi while he was working with the DoD, investigating how weapons intended for our tribal allies were being diverted to insurgents. Sala Bayoumi was playing both sides of the field. When he tried to get out by feeding information to Homeland while seeking asylum, he gave up my name and it caused an alert on my father’s involvement. Reach had never reopened an investigation on me. My father was the target and Reach was using what he knew about me to apply pressure. A dozen intelligence agencies working in our longest-running wars and not a one shared information. Typical.

  My father told me he had fixed his problems and that I now had a clean record with the Army. I don’t get justice, but I’m no longer the punch line in a horrible joke. Sometimes you take what you can get. I didn’t ask about the things Reach had said. Isn’t that what they say: Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answers to? It was telling, though, that Reach retired from the Army right after that. My father was indeed the dangerous one in the family.

  Nelson asked Uncle Orson to be his best man. They both wore their uniforms and looked amazing. Friends were there too. Sheriff Benson and his wife Emily attended and so did Billy. It was a wonderful day. You never know when the last one of those comes until it’s past. Of course the flip side is true. You never know when the next day will be amazing.

  I insisted that Nelson begin chemo again. Then radiation. That’s to say, I pushed, I nagged, and I fought for the life he seemed too willing to give up. One night, sitting beside him, I got the courage to ask, “Why? Why did you want to die?”

  I didn’t expect an answer. He was weak and so tired but he told me, “I didn’t want to die. I just didn’t want this.”

  “This what?”

  “How I am now. Before I met you . . .” His words faded and I thought perhaps he had fallen asleep or had simply shied from the thoughts behind his closed eyes. “Can you imagine?” he asked suddenly and in a stronger voice. “Can you imagine doing this alone?”

  “No,” I said. It was the truth. Going alone into the world of pain and fear was a terrible thought. I’d had my own glimpses.

  “Then . . . then I couldn’t imagine making you go through it with me. I wanted them to shoot me so you wouldn’t have this—all of this hell in your life.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I sat and held Nelson’s hand and silently cried over it. It wasn’t for me or him, either. All the tears spilling out of me at that moment were for time lost and chances set aside because of fear and doubt, the right way to act and the wrong thing to say, time spent hating and regretting instead of living. Then I wasn’t so silent. My back was shaking and thick sobs pushed my mouth open. Tears rained from my eyes and watered the wasted skin on his hand still in my grip.

  Nelson said, “You’re blowing like a hurricane, you know.”

  I didn’t laugh.

  Then he said, “I love you, Katrina.”

  “I know,” I told him. “I love you too. So much.”

  “But I love you more now than I did.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Before, I loved you enough to die for you. Now—” He jerked my hand with surprising strength. “Listen to me. Look at me, Katrina. This is important.”

  I looked him right in the eyes.

  “Now—” he said. “Now, I love you enough to live for you.”

  That would be the perfect place to say everything was all right and the ending was happily ever after. That would be cheating all the days after of their meaning. It was work and it was scary but we got through it. When he got over the wall and got a glimpse of the world on the other side, he immediately asked for his tools to begin painting.

  For my part, I tried—honestly tried—to keep the promises I’d made in prayer to my therapist. I found out it was not so easy to just let go of anger. It has a way of hiding in your personal shadows and hanging on. The therapist says it’s a process, not an event or even a decision. I didn’t hate going to see her so much anymore.

  Even when you are in the middle of fighting for life, life itself has a way of ignoring you and going right on with its business. In the days that followed that awful night, Carrie Owens’s father was released from jail and her mother arrested. Both Angela and Carrie had their funerals. The news did stories about them and Leech, then all were forgotten by those who didn’t know them. Those who did would never be able to forget or understand.

  There was a lot of blood but no bodies were found at Moonshines. Byron Figorelli and his buddy Jimmy Cardo turned up in a Louisiana bayou with a bullet hole each and hands wired behind their backs. I actually felt bad for Figorelli.

  Things settled down. It was just life. I rarely touched the scar beside my eye and the dust of Iraq mostly stayed away. By then it was fall, but fall is really just the end of summer, that beautiful transition.

  Robert E. Dunn is the author of the novels The Red Highway, The Dead Ground, and Behind the Darkness, as well as the novella Motorman. Before writing novels he spent more than twenty years as a film and video producer for both corporate and broadcast projects. A full-time fiction writer, he now resides in Kansas City with his daughters, an old truck, and an even older dog.

  He can be found online at robertdunnauthor.blogspot.com or on Twitter at @WritingDead.

 

 

  <
center> Thank you for reading books on Archive.