by Ninie Hammon
Of course, Jesse hadn’t never been none of those things. He was a weakling who wouldn’t have lasted 5 minutes in the mine. Lloyd had pampered him, hadn’t come upside the boy’s head when he’d needed it like a father’d ought to, give him too much. That boy was no more in charge of his own self than an oak leaf floating down a creek.
But what Jesse had described, the feeling he got when he was high, that’s how Lloyd felt now. Only he really was in charge of his own self, and he wasn’t about to let Will Gribbins write the end of his story.
He’d called in sick this morning because he had a job he should have finished that day in the mine back in 1980. But he’d thought at the time that Will was dead. He’d thought the same thing for the past 20 years, and he’d been wrong both times. Will Gribbins was alive. Least he would be until Lloyd put a bullet through his heart.
As he fastened his Browning bolt-action .30-06 rifle in the gun rack across the back window of his pickup truck, he considered how surprisingly easy it had been to get to this place.
Sometime during the second night of no sleep, the idea had come to him. His mind hadn’t put up much of a fight against it, neither. It wasn’t like he’d agonized over the decision. It felt like a natural progression, the next step. When the law come swooping down on Lloyd like a barn owl on a mouse, he’d tell them the story he’d been practicing in his head for two decades. But his story would only work if Will wasn’t around to say it wasn’t so.
And Lloyd could arrange that.
Hunting accidents happened all the time, particularly when the hunters was poachers, huntin’ out of season. Poachers took chances. If they’d been the kind of people who followed rules they wouldn’t be in the woods with a deer rifle the second week of October.
Will wouldn’t be dressed in hunter safety gear—fluorescent orange—to go out sangin’. You wasn’t likely to be mistook for a deer by men using bows and arrows. They had to get close to their prey—30, 45 yards away. Bow hunters wasn’t shooting from five hundred yards out, where a tree stump or a big rock could look like an eight-point buck.
And if poachers accidentally shot somebody, they wasn’t likely to come forward and man up to what they’d done, not if they wasn’t supposed to be in the woods with a gun in the first place!
Lloyd got behind the wheel, drove down the dirt road in front of his house and headed out to the four-lane. He planned to go around to the far side of the mountain, park there and walk over. He knew where the ginseng was; he knew where Will would go to find it. He already had in mind the perfect spot for an ambush. As he turned down Possum Trot Lane, he calmed his frayed nerves by concentrating on his ace-in-the-hole defense. If something bad happened to Will Gribbins, wouldn’t nobody come knocking on Lloyd Jacobs’s door—because Lloyd was Will’s best friend and he didn’t have no reason in the world to want Will dead. Least not one anybody knew about.
He parked his truck off the road, deep in the undergrowth where it couldn’t be seen, and struck out on foot. With every step, he felt stronger, more in control of his life, less at the mercy of other people and random events.
Lloyd had never had it easy like Ricky Dan, whose folks was good people. Lloyd’s family was a train wreck. Things happened in his house when the doors was closed and the rest of the world couldn’t see that…But even so, Lloyd’s life hadn’t slid totally off the tracks until #7 blew. What had happened down in the dark that day had colored every day of his life since.
It was hard even to remember those first years after it happened, hard for everybody in the hollow to remember. Folks was in shock, coping the best way they knew how. For Will, that was running away. For Lloyd, it meant drinking and carousing. He’d knocked up Norma Jean, then after Jesse was born, he’d beat her a time or two. Didn’t hurt her bad, didn’t never break nothing. He couldn’t seem to grab hold of his self—got fired from two crews for showing up to work drunk with a temper that even he knew would get him into serious trouble someday.
But everything had changed in the spring of 1990; his whole world had turned upside down.
To keep Norma Jean from pressing charges against him after he blacked her eye and split her lip in a drunken rage, he took her out on a “date.” Drove dang nigh a two-hundred-fifty miles round trip, all the way to Somerset to eat at Cracker Barrel and then go to the picture show. Didn’t know what was showing; didn’t care. He’d planned to sleep through whatever it was.
He didn’t sleep through it, though. He sat riveted to his seat.
The movie was called The Mission. It was the story of a man who had killed his brother, and to atone for his crime, he had dragged a load of shields and armor through the jungles and mountains of South America.
That movie had a more profound effect on Lloyd’s life than anything he’d ever experienced. It turned on the lights in his soul and for the first time he could see everything clearly. He had done some bad things in his life that had not caused him a moment’s guilt—and never would. But what had happened under Black Mountain the day #7 blew—it had torn Lloyd apart. Now, he knew how to fix that. He understood that he had to pay for what he’d done; he had to earn redemption.
So he’d set out in a single-minded crusade to do just that.
For an entire decade, Lloyd was a model husband and father, and took care of the Sparrow family, too. He went to church and was so pious folks noticed. Wasn’t long before he became a deacon. Then an elder! At the First Pentecostal Church of Aintree Hollow, Lloyd Jacobs was a respected man.
Like that Spaniard in the jungle, Lloyd had hauled his whole life around on his back—his wife, his kids, his church, his job. If any man had ever deserved absolution, Lloyd Jacobs was that man. But what had it got him? He was the best husband and father he knew how to be; now his wife was gone and his kids had turned into weak bloodsuckers. He’d spent 10 years doin’ for Granny and those kids and then Will Gribbins shows up out of nowhere yesterday and they treated him like he was gold! Will. The man who walked out on all of them, who never honored a word of the secret vow they’d both made.
Well, Lloyd was done trying to make things right! He’d meant what he’d said to Will yesterday morning. He would not live the next 20 years the way he’d lived the last.
Lloyd passed silently through the woods, didn’t even disturb the squirrels. He quickly found the spot he was looking for, about two hundred and fifty yards above and to the right of the meadow near the creek and the rock outcrop where he’d gone sangin’ with Will and Ricky Dan. Lloyd had only gone along with them one time, but he never forgot any of the places they went that day. The experience was a good childhood memory and he had precious few of those.
He was in position in a windfall behind a stand of cedar trees 2 hours before he spotted movement on the hillside across the meadow. Two hours without a cigarette. The smell of smoke carried in the woods. Two hours of quiet. A long time to think. And at one point during that silent wait he experienced a moment of clarity. Of sanity. It was like a lone ray of sun suddenly broke through a raging thunderstorm, beamed down to illuminate something below so bright everything else was cast in harsh relief. In that moment, the outrageousness of the act he had plotted was laid bare, naked and steaming before him.
Lloyd was about to commit murder.
Time ground to a halt for a breathless instant as the realization sunk in. Then the moment passed. The dark storm clouds gathered and darkness rolled in over his soul.
With a curious detachment, Lloyd watched through the telescopic sight on his rifle. Saw Will and Jamey top the hill and followed their progress down it and through the trees to the edge of the meadow.
When it came time to put the crosshairs on Will’s chest, Lloyd didn’t flinch. With an icy calm, he squeezed the trigger, didn’t pull it. It was a good shot.
WILL GLANCED DOWN as he was about to step into the clearing, noticed that his shoelace had come untied and leaned over to tie it. That’s when he heard the crack of a rifle and an almost simultaneous thunk as a bu
llet slammed into the tree trunk a few feet away—so close he could feel the air rearrange itself as the slug passed over his head.
“What the…!” This was bow season! Deer hunters couldn’t use rifles until November. Why…?
Another bullet plowed a furrow in the dirt inches from Will’s shoe and instinct took over. Still bent over his shoelace, he turned and tackled Jamey, knocked him to the ground, then shoved him toward a downed tree a few feet away. Another bullet clipped a chunk out of the bark of that tree as he dived behind it.
Will lay there panting for a moment, then yelled, “Hey! Are you blind? Hold your fire! You dang near killed us.” He paused. “You hear me?”
The woods were silent.
Will looked at Jamey. The boy’s eyes were bugged out, green gumdrops on snowballs. Will reached over and patted his shoulder. “It’s okay. Good thing that guy’s a lousy shot.”
“Why’s he shootin’ at us?”
“He thought we were deer.”
“Couldn’t he see your shirt?”
Will’s shirt was a bright blue corduroy; Jamey’s was fire-truck red. He might not have been a hunter, but Will had gone along with Ricky Dan often enough to know that the flash of anything blue—merely a flash of it—and no hunter in his right mind would fire. Blue was a “Sears color,” a color not found in the woods. Will had been standing at the edge of the clearing. This guy didn’t just catch a glimpse of blue through brush or tree limbs. He should have been able to see the whole shirt!
Even poachers—no, especially poachers—weren’t that stupid. Shooting somebody would be a really bad way to get caught hunting out of season.
Okay then, why’d he shoot? Better question—why’d he shoot three times?
Answer—because he missed the first two.
Will felt a chill, like icicles forming in all his veins.
“I guess the sun was in his eyes,” Will said, but he didn’t believe that. One look at Jamey and it was plain he didn’t believe it either.
Careful to remain behind the downed tree, Will peered through the brush toward the other side of the meadow. Nothing. Not that he’d expected to see anybody. A hunter with a scope could drop a deer from five hundred yards away.
“I wanna go home,” Jamey said softly. The boy was completely transparent. What he thought came out his mouth; what he felt showed on his face. “I don’t like it out here no more. The end.”
“I’m with you, Buddy. I don’t like it, either.” He patted the boy on the shoulder. “Rain check?”
Jamey nodded but said nothing.
Will pointed to the hill they’d topped a few minutes earlier. “Stay down low behind the bushes until we’re on the other side of that rise.”
The two of them turned and made their way slowly back up the hillside, crouched down like walking bent-over in the mine. As they crested the hill, they heard the mournful cry of a coal train whistle, and Will stopped, staggered by a memory still so powerful it could make him physically sick.
LLOYD MISSED!
How could he possibly have missed?
Will had been right in his crosshairs; the bullet should have plowed through his chest and ripped open his heart. But at the last second, Will ducked, leaned over for some reason and the bullet had whizzed by him so close he likely felt the breeze it kicked up.
Lloyd got off two more shots, but the target was two hundred fifty yards away, hidden in the bushes instead of right out there in plain sight.
A wave of such nuclear rage swept over Lloyd that he wanted to break the stock of the rifle over a tree trunk.
He missed!
Now what?
Should Lloyd go after him? Will was, after all, unarmed. Lloyd could follow him back toward the trailer and try to find another spot to pick him off. Gratefully, sanity grabbed him by the collar before he could run off through the woods like he was tracking a wounded doe.
He couldn’t go after Will. Jamey was with him.
It had been a calculated risk to shoot at Will with Jamey so close in the first place. It had been even riskier to keep shooting after the first shot missed the mark. You could believe a deer hunter mistook you for a buck once. But three times?
If he went after Will, the deer hunter ruse would be exposed for what it was. No hunter would accidentally shoot two people, and that’s what he’d have to do. He’d have to get rid of the witness.
His mind pulled up short at that. Not Jamey.
He swallowed hard. No choice, he had to pack it in.
Reluctantly, Lloyd got to his feet, slung the strap of the .30-06 over his shoulder and headed back the way he’d come, to the spot on the other side of the mountain where he’d parked his truck.
He’d had the perfect opportunity to get rid of Will Gribbins. And he’d blown it. That kind of opportunity came one to a customer. Now, Lloyd had no scapegoat. When the world tumbled down, it would land squarely on his head.
He heard the lonely wail of a coal train whistle then, and a memory spirited him away to another place and another decade. He’d been stronger than Will that day, bolder, with a reckless bravery that made him invincible. At least that’s what he’d thought at the time. But two decades of living had beaten all the sentimentality out of him. As a kid, he’d believed that invincibility was the product of courage. Now, he understood it was the product of despair, of not caring one way or the other whether you lived or died.
CHAPTER 17
A coal train whistle blasts out its warning and they both look back over their shoulders. The train’s still at least a mile away, maybe more, but it’s definitely time to get off the trestle.
A boy just on the threshold of adolescence, Will is tall for his age and lean. Lloyd is shorter, stockier, most likely stronger, too, though they have never matched up against each other all out. They’ve come close a time or two, but always backed away from it, as if doing so would cross some line, take them to a place they could never come back from.
Will tosses a final rock, watches it sail through the air and splash into Ugly Betty Creek 50 feet below.
“You see that ’un—kaplunk…splish!” Will says in the universal sound-effects language of young boys. He and Lloyd have sat for the last half hour on the cross ties on the side of the trestle with their feet dangling off the edge, chucking rocks—and spitting, too, of course—into the creek below. “Wish I had me one more big rock. But we gotta go.”
Will stands up, but Lloyd just sits there, swinging his feet back and forth.
“C’mon,” Will says. As if to emphasize his point, the train whistle sounds again, noticeably closer this time. “Race ya to the far side!”
Bootleg Trestle is almost four hundred feet long. It stretches across a rocky ravine where Ugly Betty Creek meanders among the boulders. The boys are not in the middle of the trestle; the far side—away from the oncoming train—is at least three hundred feet from them.
“What if we don’t,” Lloyd says.
“Don’t what?”
“Get off the trestle.”
“You nuts! There’s a train comin’.”
Lloyd looks up at Will, squints into the sun, and reaches up to shade his eyes. “That’s the point. What if we stay on the trestle while the train crosses?”
Will is so dumbfounded he’s rendered momentarily speechless.
“You really think we could sit here and not get knocked off the edge? This thing ain’t that wide.”
“I ain’t talkin’ ’bout sittin’ on the edge.”
“Then where?”
“Over there.” Lloyd points to the tracks. “We could lay down ’tween the tracks and let the train pass over us.”
“Yeah, right,” Will says, relieved that Lloyd has been joking, isn’t really suggesting they stay on the trestle. He takes a couple of steps back toward the short side, careful to step on the cross ties and not into the 6-inch open space between them. “You reckon maybe they’s crawdads in Ugly Betty? We ain’t never…” He realizes Lloyd isn’t beside him, tur
ns and sees Lloyd sitting where he’d left him, swinging his feet, staring off down the ravine.
“Lloyd…?”
“I’m doin’ it. I’m stickin’.”
Will feels an ache in his belly he has no name for.
“Lloyd, you’ll get killed!”
“You think anybody’d care if I did?” The rage and pain in the words travels across the space between them like a shock wave under the sea; when it rises up and hits Will in the chest the force literally knocks him backward a step.
Of course, Will has seen the bruises shaped like squeezing fingers on Lloyd’s upper arms. He knows why Lloyd never wants to take his shirt off in the locker room during PE at school. He’s been a party to the excuses Lloyd makes for the black eyes and swollen lips—Will tripped me. Me ’n Will was climbin’ a tree and I fell out. Will’s knee got me when me ’n him was wrestlin’. It is a wordless arrangement; neither has ever spoken of it. Will knows what is happening to Lloyd at home, but he sees the fierce pride in Lloyd’s eyes and doesn’t ask about it. They both simply accept what they can do nothing about and go on with life.
But this is different! Risking your life is—
“It ain’t dangerous as you think,” Lloyd says, his voice maddeningly calm. Only his eyes are wild. “Look a-here.” He gets up, walks to the track and steps over the rail. “Ain’t nothing here but railroad ties.”
“So?”
“So do you see any scratch marks on them ties, like maybe them trains drag some’m, or a piece of ’em hangs all the way down to the ground?”
The 8-inch square beams coated with creosote, spaced 6 inches apart, have no marks of any kind on them. Will says nothing.
“if ’n some’m hung down, there’d be marks. You seen coal cars same as me. There’s least a foot clearance underneath ’em, maybe more.”
Will stares at him in stunned disbelief. Lloyd is serious. He really means to do it.
“All’s you gotta do is lay still and it’ll pass right over ya.”
