by Pratt, Scott
It was getting dark as he started the thirteenth lap around the quarter-mile track. Four miles was his routine these days, sixteen laps. Charlie had told him about finding her fortune during her last visit. He’d been astounded at first, but then he’d given her his best advice: keep your mouth shut, don’t trust anybody. There was really nothing he could do to help. He was stuck, just as he’d been stuck for more than two decades. Maybe the money would make their lives easier when he got out, maybe it would make things harder. He knew he was ill-equipped to deal with something so complicated. His main concern was whether he’d be able to adapt to life without someone telling him what he could and couldn’t do every second of the day.
A large man walked out of the thick forest near the end of the straightaway to Luke’s right. He wasn’t wearing the khaki of a prisoner or the blue uniform worn by the guards. A cap was pulled down tightly over his head, a dark jacket draped over his torso. Luke kept walking, more curious than anything else.
The man approached. Luke slowed as he drew closer, beginning to grow uneasy. The man was smiling.
“You’re Luke Story, right?” His tone was friendly, casual.
The man was less than five feet away. “Yeah, who are you?”
Luke saw his hand go to his waist. A gun appeared.
The last thing Luke saw was a flash.
Chapter 44
THE news of Zane Barnes’s grisly death had shocked Charlie, but the news of her father’s murder the following day had buckled her knees. She was fixing breakfast for herself and Jasper at six o’clock in the morning when she received a phone call from the warden of the prison. Jasper had helped her into a chair in the den where she’d cried for an hour. Then they moved into the kitchen and Charlie had tried to talk about it, to make some sense of it, but she’d lost control of herself again and cried for another hour. She’d finally gone to her bedroom and was lying face down across the bed, still clothed and still weeping, when she heard Jasper step inside.
“I want to show you something,” he said. “I’m thinking it might make you feel a little better.”
Charlie sat up and Jasper took her arm. He led her out the back door and up the path to his shop.
“We’re going in there?” Charlie asked as he unlocked the padlock.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I haven’t been in there since you kicked me out when I was a little girl.”
“I know, and don’t think you can come sniffing around here any time you want just because I’m letting you in now.”
Jasper turned on a couple of lights. The room was large, maybe twenty feet by thirty feet. The floor was concrete with a drain in the middle. There was a long work bench along the far wall, a refrigerator and a freezer next to another, a chain lift in the corner, and an incinerator along the wall to her left. There was a work table to Charlie’s right, next to it was a huge elk with no eyes, no nose, and no mouth. The plank walls were covered in animal heads, animal hides, knives and saws. There was a shelf full of chemicals, a couple of tool chests, and a large, metal vat. The room had a faint chemical smell, a mixture of paint, glue and solvent.
Jasper walked to a door between the refrigerator and the freezer and unlocked another padlock. Charlie followed.
“This is what I want you to see,” he said. “Just hold up one second.”
Jasper walked through the door and pulled it closed behind him. Charlie saw another light come on and he stepped back out.
“Okay now, Peanut, this is probably gonna shock you a little at first, but you have to promise me you won’t scream or faint or nothing like that.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t go in,” Charlie said. “I think I’ve had enough shock for one day.”
“I want you to see it. Like I said, I think it’ll make you feel better, as long as you can keep an open mind.”
Charlie nodded and took a deep breath. Jasper pulled the door open slowly and led her in. He stepped to the side, revealing one of the most bizarre scenes Charlie had ever witnessed.
“Is that…? Is that…? Is that what I think it is?”
She turned her head to Jasper, who was nodding slowly, then back to the display. There were three small spotlights above, each one illuminating a different… person. All of them were on a raised platform about a foot off the floor. On the right was Grandpa Story. He was wearing the old hat he always wore, a green hunting jacket over a blue, denim shirt, a pair of green pants and hiking boots. There was a shotgun laid across his shoulders behind his head. His left hand was wrapped around the stock and his right was draped over the barrel. He was looking upward, into the spotlight, and he was smiling. He looked happy. He looked alive.
In the middle, sitting in a rocking chair, wearing a long, purple dress, was Charlie’s grandmother. Her silver hair was pulled back into a bun and her glasses were resting on the end of her nose. She was holding a knitting needle in each hand and appeared to be halfway through a red sweater. She, too, was smiling, though it wasn’t a grin like the one on Grandpa’s face. Her smile was almost coy; it reminded Charlie of the Mona Lisa.
The person, figure, whatever it was, on the other end was a young woman, beautiful with long, reddish hair and blue eyes, wearing a pink, summer dress and holding an artificial red rose. Charlie recognized her from photos she’d seen. It was Rachel, Jasper’s wife. She appeared to be sniffing the flower, and the expression on her face was one of contentment and joy. Charlie looked at her, then back at the others, with a sense of wonder. They looked so… so real. How did he do this? How could he possibly—?
“I keep them here with me,” Jasper said quietly. “They’re a comfort.”
“I don’t understand,” Charlie said. “How?”
“I know you’re gonna think I’m crazy. Most people already think I’m crazy, and maybe I am. But the way I looked at it was they could just rot in the ground, or I could bring ‘em home with me and make ‘em beautiful and keep ‘em close. I think they like it better this way.”
“So it’s actually them? Their bodies?”
“No, Peanut, it ain’t them. Well, sorta. I did the same for them that I do for the animals that come in here. I preserved them. I tried to make them look like they did when they were alive.”
“But how did you get them? I mean, I saw Grandma and Grandpa go into the ground.”
“I dug ‘em up, simple as that. Same night they was buried. I just took the bodies and put the caskets back in the ground. I know it’s against the law, but nobody knows. No harm done. I bought mannequins and I added a little putty here, shaved a little there, matched up the eyes and the hair, got the skin color just the way I wanted. I freshen ‘em up every now and then. Don’t you think they look good?”
Charlie nodded. She felt as though she were dreaming. “This is weird, uncle. I’m not sure how I feel about this.”
“To each his own,” Jasper said. “I just wanted you to know that I can do the same for Luke if you’d like, if it would ease your mind. You could come in and visit from time to time.”
“I don’t know. No, I don’t think so. I wouldn’t get the same… no, thank you, but I don’t think so.”
“Suit yourself.”
Charlie thought about asking how long he planned to keep them, but the answer was obvious. He’d keep them until he died. She supposed if she outlived him, she’d have an unusual and difficult decision to make.
“There’s one more thing I want to show you,” he said.
“I don’t know how you could top this.”
Jasper turned forty-five degrees and walked to the corner of the room. A black curtain that Charlie hadn’t noticed was hanging at an angle across the corner from the ceiling to the floor. Jasper pulled the curtain to the side. His body blocked Charlie’s view; she couldn’t see what was in front of him.
“He came for you the night he shot that Dillard boy.”
Charlie walked slowly toward her uncle’s back.
“I had to do it, Peanut. Didn’t see no other wa
y. But you can rest easy now. He won’t be bothering you again.”
Charlie moved up beside Jasper and gasped.
On a small table in the corner, resting on a silver platter, was Clyde Dalton’s bald head.
Chapter 45
LUKE'S graveside service was held on a bright morning in the same cemetery where Roscoe Barnes was buried. Charlie was surprised at the number of people who showed up: high school and college classmates of hers that she hadn’t seen in years, old friends of her father’s, friends of Jasper’s. Joe Dillard, along with his wife and Jack, were there. Jack’s arm was still in a sling from the fractured collarbone. Charlie felt her spirit lift when she saw Jack, but there was a distance between them now that hadn’t been there before she took him up to the cave. He would respond to a text message if she sent him one and was always polite in her presence, but he had stopped initiating communication and seemed to be somewhat distracted.
Charlie found herself thinking strange thoughts as she and Jasper sat beneath the small canopy that had been erected over the grave and the preacher went through the motions of praising a man he’d never met. She wondered what all these people would think if they knew the two graves next to Luke were empty. What if she had allowed Jasper to “preserve” Luke and they’d held the ceremony in Jasper’s macabre little theater and unveiled Luke like a statue or sculpture?
Charlie spent almost an hour after the ceremony talking to the people who’d come, accepting their condolences with a sense of gratitude. When everyone had left, she got into the passenger’s side of Jasper’s truck and they headed for home.
“You promise you’ll leave him there?” she asked. “I want him to just rest in peace.”
“Already told you I would.”
“You promise, though? Do you swear?”
“No need for that.”
They rode in silence for a few minutes along the mountain road, Jasper moving slowly through the switchbacks and up and down the slopes. Charlie’s grief had ebbed and flowed over the past few days. She’d long envisioned the day she would pick her father up at the prison, take him by the hand, and lead him back to the world. Twenty years. Twenty years of missed birthdays and holidays and proms and graduations. Twenty years of people asking about her father along with twenty years of embarrassed, untruthful responses. She felt cheated out of her past and cheated out of her future. She’d spent hours at night asking herself questions, terrified of what the answers might be.
“So who do you think killed him?” she asked Jasper.
The phone calls Charlie had made to the warden were frustrating. At first, all he would say was that the Bureau of Prisons had their “best investigators” on the case and that Luke had been shot, but after Charlie told him she was a lawyer and threatened to sue, he became a little more cooperative.
“Could an inmate smuggle a gun in?” Charlie had asked.
“Not likely, but there are no walls.”
“So people can just wander on and off the property? Anybody can get in?”
“It’s unusual that someone would want to get into a prison, even a minimum security facility like this. And the inmates here are all short-timers. None of them want to go back to medium or high security. I can assure you that nothing like this has ever happened.”
“Where was he when he was shot?”
“He was walking on the track. He walked every evening at the same time from what I understand.”
“Nobody else was there?”
“No.”
“Nobody saw anything unusual? Nobody heard anything?”
“The investigators are talking to every inmate, every staff member. So far, nobody’s been able to provide anything useful.”
“Any physical evidence?”
“Just the bullet that was removed from his… from the body. It was a .22-caliber long rifle. The investigators think whoever shot him used a silencer. It looks like it was done by a professional.”
There was a faded blue Camaro that Charlie didn’t recognize sitting in the driveway when she and Jasper pulled up to the house. Charlie looked at the tags: West Virginia.
“Didn’t think she’d have the nerve,” Jasper said.
“Who? What do you mean?”
“It’s your momma. I seen her at the funeral.”
Charlie sat in stupefied silence as Jasper parked the truck. She looked closely at the car; there didn’t appear to be anyone inside. She turned and looked at Jasper.
“Turn around,” she said, almost whispering. “Drive away.”
Jasper shook his head. “That ain’t the way to do this. Might as well let her say what she’s got to say.”
“I don’t want to talk to her.”
“You don’t have to talk.”
“But I don’t… I don’t—”
“C’mon.” Jasper was opening his door and climbing out. “I got a thing or two to say to her.”
Charlie had to concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other as they walked up the steps to the back porch, past the lounging Biscuit. When they walked through the back door, Charlie saw her sitting at the kitchen table, smoking a cigarette. Her hair was long and auburn, lighter than Charlie’s with streaks of gray, her eyes large and turquoise. She was slim and still attractive, but had a hard look about her, a look of poverty and struggle, much like the people who congregated on the courthouse steps when court was in session. She was wearing a short-sleeved, black dress with a high neckline. She looked at Jasper first, then at Charlie. Her eyes seemed to soften.
“What are you doing here, Ruth Ann?” Jasper said.
She was still looking at Charlie as though she were measuring her up before a fistfight.
“Came to pay my respects to you and my daughter,” she said.
Charlie had stopped in the middle of the kitchen. She met her mother’s gaze and held it steadily. There was no sense of familiarity, no instinctive twinge of recognition or maternal longing. It had been so long since Charlie had heard her mother’s voice. And now that she was hearing it, it was the voice of a stranger.
“Consider ‘em paid,” Jasper said.
“You grew up fine.” Ruth Ann’s eyes hadn’t left Charlie’s. “Pretty and fine.”
“You just get on outta here,” Jasper said. “Who do you think you are to come waltzing in here like you own the place? Go on back to West Virginia, back to your people.”
“Why did you abandon me?”
The question Charlie had asked in her mind a million times, a question to which she desperately needed an answer, had come out spontaneously, almost involuntarily. It was as though someone else’s voice had come out of her body, as though she’d exited herself and was hovering near the ceiling, watching the scene unfold beneath her.
Ruth Ann took a long drag from her cigarette and blew the smoke out slowly.
“I couldn’t take care of you,” she said. “Couldn’t take care of myself at the time, let alone a child. Your daddy was in jail, the government took everything we had. I started drinking a lot, taking pills. I wasn’t in my right mind.”
Charlie took a couple of steps toward the table, pulled out a chair, sat down.
“But all these years, not a word. Why?”
“I was ashamed. I’m still ashamed.”
“You ought to be.” Jasper’s voice was sharp with anger. “Run off and leave a little girl, your own flesh and blood, without so much as a fare thee well. Leave Momma and Daddy to raise her, both of them already sick about what happened to Luke. You can say what you want about liquor or pills or whatever, but the plain truth is that you just didn’t want to face up to it. You ain’t nothing but a coward, plain and simple. Ain’t no other word for it.”
Ruth Ann dropped her cigarette into a Styrofoam cup that was sitting in front of her and stood up.
“I guess you’ve been waiting a long time to say that to me,” she said.
She picked up the cup and started around the table. She paused and put her hand on Charlie’s shoulder
.
“I’m sorry about your daddy, and I’m sorry for what I did to you. I live in Mount Hope, West Virginia, just north of the prison where they were keeping Luke. You’d be welcome there any time.”
Charlie sat motionless. She listened to Ruth Ann’s heels clicking on the back porch, listened to her car start up, listened to the gravel crackling as she drove away.
“Goodbye,” she whispered.
Chapter 46
IT was two-thirty in the morning, and Johnny and Carlo were on the move again.
“Can you believe this place?” Carlo was in the passenger seat, as usual, as they rode through the darkness. “Freakin’ mountains and trees and cows and corn, that’s all there is. The food sucks. Could you believe that spaghetti we ate last night? The sauce was ketchup with a little hamburger, the pasta was so overcooked it was like glue. And these people, man. Not an Italian in sight. I ain’t seen a Jew or a black dude in a week, not that I miss them, but this is weird. No Catholic churches. Everybody’s named Smith or Jones.”
“Yeah, it’s white bread,” Johnny said. “Cracker white bread. The way they talk makes me want to puke. I never heard anybody make a two-syllable word out of yes. Yay-yus. And beer? Bee-yer. I swear to God I’d either die of boredom or shoot myself if I had to live here.”
“That club was the worst I’ve ever been to,” Carlo said. They’d driven to Johnson City on their way back from killing Luke Story. It’s a college town, home to East Tennessee State University, and they thought they’d find some action, but it was summer and most of the students had gone home. “Did you see the way they looked at us? Like we were aliens or something, from outer space.”
