The Borrowed World (Book 4): No Time For Mourning

by Franklin Horton

  “She’s right,” Randi’s dad pitched in. “The grandkids will stay here with us if you want to go. Your grandmother and I can look out for them. Tommy can go with you and Jeff will stay here with us.”

  He was referring to Randi’s older brothers. Randi resented being assigned a babysitter. “I’m a grown woman, Daddy. I do not need someone to go with me. I am perfectly capable of getting my girls to their dad’s house and back home alive. Do I need to remind you that I walked all the way from Richmond? We’ll carry guns and stay off the main road.”

  Her father studied her. They’d butted heads more times than he could recall. Randi won some. He won some. Sometimes no one could be declared winner and they avoided each other for a few days until the smoke cleared. “How about if you just do it for my peace of mind,” he finally said. “Let Tommy go with you as an extra gun in case you need it. Jeff’s already out hunting this morning anyway, so he can’t go.”

  Randi looked around the room at all the eyes on her. She didn’t have the energy to fight them off this morning. She lowered her head back to the table. “Okay,” she conceded. “We can go. Tommy can go.”

  Her daughters looked at each other, sharing some sister telepathy. They weren’t done with their mother yet.

  “Maybe we could go with Tommy, Mom, and you could stay home. We don’t need you to go if he’s going,” Carla offered. “You don’t even want to go anyway.”

  Randi laughed. “Not a chance.”

  “Why not?” Sherry asked, knowing that her mother would be complaining about their father for the entire trip.

  “‘Cause if we find him dead, I don’t want to miss the opportunity to spit on his dead body.”

  Randi’s daughters frowned and walked off.

  “She’s joking,” their grandfather called after them.

  “The hell I am,” Randi said.

  Chapter 4

  Jeff

  Randi’s brother Jeff spent more time in the woods than he did in the house. He was always camping, hunting, or fishing. Like many of the people in the remote area where they lived, Jeff observed his own hunting seasons. If game was moving around it was hunting season. If game was laying low it was fishing season. While his family was always worried that he’d get in trouble with the game wardens, it was hard to call Jeff a poacher. He didn’t hunt for trophies, but for subsistence. He ate everything he killed. That he lived in an era and location where subsistence hunting had fallen out of favor was an injustice in his eyes – a much greater injustice than him killing a deer out of season.

  Jeff had a variety of tree stands and semi-permanent blinds built around the family farm. He planted food plots that would draw game near those locations. On this morning, Jeff had not had any luck. There had been a lot of does on the property lately and he wanted to harvest one. They could have a nice dinner and then his mother could can the rest. Of course, with their special senses, the deer seemed to know he was out hunting today. On the days that he was working the fields or riding around on a four-wheeler, they paid no attention to him at all. They would barely even look up at him as they grazed in plain sight. Not today.

  He had started to climb out of his tree stand several times but kept thinking he heard something. Then he heard it again—the snapping of a tree branch. Jeff held his breath and listened carefully. It could be a deer, yet it sounded different, like the snapping of the branch was muffled by a foot on top of it. That was more likely a bear.

  Or a man.

  Jeff cocked his head and finally got an inkling of where the sound was coming from. He raised his rifle, sighting through the scope. He caught a flash of movement. It was not an animal unless they’d taken to wearing plaid flannel shirts. Jeff felt an immediate flush of anger. This was his family’s farm. Anyone from around here would know that. Whoever this was had to know that this wasn’t their own property and was willfully trespassing. It wasn’t just the crime that angered Jeff, it was the bold affront to his home, his sovereign territory.

  The figure in flannel left the trees and entered a clearing. Through his scope, Jeff could recognize the figure now. It was Kyle Cross, a man of about Jeff’s own age who lived with his parents on a farm down the road. Kyle and Jeff had never gotten along. They’d fought on the school bus, on the playground, at parties, and at high school football games. They’d fought over words, over women, and over the way one man looked at the other. If Jeff had any enemies in this world, he was looking at one of them right now. Kyle was indeed a man with no respect for boundaries, whether legal or social. It was nothing to him to cross a fence and hunt another man’s game.

  It irritated Jeff that Kyle had land of his own he could hunt, and instead chose to poach off a neighbor. He had brothers and a sister that often ran with him but Jeff couldn’t see anyone with him now. Maybe the brothers were hunting their own land and Kyle wanted to venture out and see if he could bring home some meat when they couldn’t. He’d made the wrong call here. This could be a fatal mistake.

  With the crosshairs of his scope centered on Kyle’s head, Jeff touched the trigger lightly and made the sound of an explosion with his mouth. He smiled. “Got you, you bastard.”

  He continued to watch Kyle. The man stopped, leaned his gun against a tree, and unzipped his fly. Jeff’s anger rose again. Kyle obviously felt so confident in his trespassing that he could take a comfortable piss there in the open as if he didn’t have a concern in the world.

  Jeff lowered his crosshairs to the open fly and snapped the safety off. “Now that would give them something to talk about, wouldn’t it?” he muttered.

  He considered the shot, considered the implications. The man had two brothers, a sister, and parents who were as mean as any people had ever been. They were a family that the police only visited when things got so bad they could not be ignored. They stole, they sold drugs, and they sometimes burned down houses. They’d once beaten a man so badly that his brain nearly came loose from its moorings and his head swelled so bad it threatened to push his eyeballs out. The man’s crime? Breaking up with their daughter.

  Still, in this part of the country, allowing a man to take this liberty with your property would only be the first step. Once he saw that he could get away with trespassing, he’d come back. He’d try something else the next time. Maybe he’d steal something. This could only end one way. A family like Kyle’s only understood one thing.

  As Jeff considered all this – safety off, finger on the trigger – Kyle zipped up and deprived Jeff of what would have been a shot of legendary acclaim. Kyle dropped down to the ground and took a rest against the base of a tree. He removed a water bottle from his pants pocket, took a drink, then lit up a cigarette.

  Jeff remembered being at a party a year or so ago at a run-down trailer way back in the woods. The man who owned the trailer was a hunting buddy of Jeff’s, a friend from high school. His name was Red Lawson and he worked as a diesel mechanic. His trailer was old, with power and little else. No phone, no TV, and barely even a road going in, only a trail through tall grass that stopped at a clearing. There sat the trailer, covered in peeling green paint and shedding parts like it was frozen in the early stages of an explosion.

  As Jeff pulled up, he could hear loud Lynyrd Skynyrd. There was a keg in the yard and lots of people sitting around on coolers and logs. There was a fire, which was one of the better things about living in the country. If you wanted to have a bonfire in your front yard you just did it. Jeff parked his old Ford, grabbed his twelve-pack of Milwaukee’s Best, and joined the party. He knew everyone and everyone knew him.

  They were all having a good time until Kyle Cross showed up with a rough-looking crew comprised of one of his brothers, Tim, and his sister Lisa. They’d been into meth a lot lately and it appeared that they’d been into it that night. Their eyes were red and crazy. They were sucking down straight liquor and kept laughing like they shared some private joke.

  Lisa’s nose was running and she was constantly sucking at her scabby lips. Th
e other women kept looking at her. She was universally hated by nearly everyone except her brothers. Most men were afraid of her and most women skirted around her like she was a chained Rottweiler. She knew how other women felt about her and she lived up to their expectations, antagonizing other women and starting fights. Everyone at the party thought they knew how the night would end. They would be wrong.

  When the group of ruffians tried to mingle no one would interact with them. For most, it was out of fear. The Cross family took it as an insult and began antagonizing the other guests. Lisa Cross thought another girl was looking at her funny and threw a beer at her, catching the girl square in the face. The host of the party had enough and approached Jeff to see if he would back him up in asking the Crosses to leave. Jeff had no problem with it. He sucked down his beer, flipped his cigarette into the fire, and said, “By God, let’s do it.”

  They found Tim and Lisa Cross sitting on the tailgate of their truck passing a bottle of Jack Daniels between them.

  “That bitch started it,” Lisa said when she saw them approaching. She’d been thrown out of enough places in her life to know what was coming.

  “I don’t care who started it,” Red said. “It’s my house and you all need to go.”

  “My brother’s taking a piss,” Tim said. “When he gets back we’ll talk about it. We don’t care much for people telling us what to do. It kinda pisses us off.”

  Red shrugged. “There ain’t nothing to talk about. You all got to go. Get your ass in that truck and get the hell out of here.”

  “Who’s going to make us?” Lisa asked. “You?”

  Jeff was standing behind Red in case he needed him. He didn’t hear Kyle come up behind him. He didn’t know anyone was there until a pain exploded in the back of his head and he lurched forward. As he fell to the ground, he saw Tim and Lisa lunge for Red. Although Red was a big boy, nearly two hundred and sixty pounds of muscle, the Crosses fought like each fight was their last, showing no mercy and fighting utterly without rules. While those two were engaging Red and keeping him distracted, Kyle lashed out at Red with the same weapon he’d used on Jeff, a pair of homemade brass knuckles. He caught him in the back of the head. Red grunted and staggered.

  Jeff was on the ground beneath the tailgate of the Cross’ pickup. He was trying to clear his head to get back in the fight but the pain was blinding. He was afraid they’d cracked his skull. He willed his arms to work, to lift his body so that he could help his friend. He had a pistol in the truck. A pistol would be the only thing that would stop this fight if he could focus enough to retrieve it.

  He rolled to his hands and knees and tried to get up. Tim Cross turned from punching Red and kicked Jeff in the ribs, then again in the head. Jeff fell over, his synapses misfiring and his signals crossing. He lay beneath the tailgate watching his friend being kicked and punched by the three siblings, completely unable to do anything about it.

  In the periphery of his vision, he saw a gun come out of Kyle Cross’ waistband. It seemed like it was happening in slow motion.

  “Nooooooooo,” Jeff slurred. “Nooooooooo!”

  He tried to crawl, tried to yell for help. He looked for others at the party who could stop what was about to happen but he couldn’t see that far. He knew that no one would get in the way of the sociopaths. They were all probably running for their cars about now. Jeff focused on the face above the gun. Kyle was grinning as if he were in the midst of telling a joke and wanting to make sure that everyone was following along.

  Kyle dropped, his knee landing on Red’s chest. Jeff saw his friend’s face – red, swollen, bleeding. Jeff tried to raise his head, tried to find words. A tooth rolled from Red’s mouth and stuck in his beard.

  Kyle lay the pistol flat against the side of Red’s head and pulled the trigger. There was a flash and a concussion. Dust blew up from the ground. Red’s eyes flew open, bulging. His mouth gaped and sucked air, trying to scream, unable to gain enough wind to make a sound. Kyle had fired into the ground, missing Red, but in placing the pistol against his ear, he’d blown out his eardrum.

  Kyle grinned at the suffering man, raising himself back up to stand over him. Lisa was standing beside Tim, her hand resting on his shoulder.

  “Damn,” she said, shaking her head. “That shit was cold.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” Tim said.

  The family clambered into their truck, unhurried, as if they were leaving a convenience store after a run for cigarettes and beer. Several men from the party ran over and dragged the two injured men clear of the truck. The Cross family had made no effort. They would have backed over them with no more regard than they held for roadkill.

  Although Jeff had never gotten even, not a night passed that he didn’t think about it. Maybe now, in a world with no rules, it was time. If he took his revenge, what consequences could there be? It wasn’t like the sheriff would come. It wasn’t like anyone would even care about the death of this piece of shit.

  His buddy Red could no longer hunt with him, unable to hear the sounds of the woods above the permanent ringing in his one good ear. He wasn’t the same man anymore. He didn’t even like to leave the house. While the Crosses hadn’t killed him, Jeff had still lost his best friend. He watched Kyle Cross sitting beneath the tree and finishing his cigarette without a care in the world. Kyle flipped the butt into the grass, unconcerned with whether it might start a fire in the last summer grass. He raised his water bottle to his lips again. Jeff centered his crosshairs on the bottom of that plastic bottle and fired a round right through it.

  The round exploded the bottle and shattered Kyle’s teeth before slicing through the brain stem in a less than surgical manner. A spray the color of roses wrapped the front of the tree. Kyle remained propped there a moment before he tipped over, sagging lifelessly into the grass.

  Jeff walked casually down to the body and regarded it. The ruined head and face would have nauseated him had it not pleased him so much. On anyone else the devastation would have been off-putting. On Kyle, it was deserved and fitting. Jeff picked up the man’s rifle and slung it over his shoulder. He saw the butt of a pistol exposed beneath the tail of Kyle’s flannel shirt. His knuckles brushed the still-warm flesh as he pulled a Springfield Operator 1911 from the belt. It was too expensive a pistol for trash like this, and Jeff knew it had to be stolen.

  He leaned over to start patting Kyle’s pockets then heard voices. He froze and listened. There were people coming. Kyle’s family must have been close and heard the shot. They wanted to see if he’d killed anything and needed help dragging it out. As Jeff jogged off, he thought of the surprise those Crosses were in store for. He couldn’t help but smile. About damn time somebody killed one of those lowlifes.

  Chapter 5

  Jeff

  When he got back home Jeff found Randi, his brother Tommy, and Randi’s girls had already left to go track down the girls’ father. Sherry’s three kids were awake and running around the house, yelling and chasing each other. When he walked in the door, the children altered their course and mobbed him. Jeff toppled over playfully, letting the kids wrestle him to the floor.

  “Hungry?” his mother, Vergie, called from the kitchen.

  “Starving,” he replied. Despite the violence of his morning, he felt no apprehension at all. It was like a gnawing pain had been removed from him. All he felt was a sense of satisfaction that made him want to tell people what he’d done, yet he knew he couldn’t. His brother and sister would understand though they’d be the only ones. His parents would never approve. They’d raised him to be better than that.

  “I got pancakes,” his mother said. “Didn’t think the kids would leave you any but I managed to squirrel away a few. There’s no syrup. We have some good honey butter, though.”

  “That sounds fine,” he said. “If I can get up.”

  “We’re not letting you up,” the children chorused, launching into a new effort to pin him to the floor.

  “If you don’t le
t me up, your mamaw is going to give you all baths,” he whispered.

  The oldest screamed and took off running, her young siblings not far behind. Jeff got up from the floor, brushed off, and strode to the kitchen.

  “I told those young’uns you’d bathe them if they didn’t let me go,” he said, seating himself before a plate of pancakes.

  “They need it,” his mother said. “They’re all dirty as a hoe handle. I can’t recall the last bath any of them had.”

  “I saw them playing in the watering trough yesterday,” Jeff said, shoving a forkful of pancakes into his mouth. They were delicious. The honey butter was as good as any syrup.

  “That ain’t nothing but a festering stew of cow poop and slobber,” his mother said. “Ain’t nothing clean about that.”

  “If it makes you feel better, I’ll bring up a couple of buckets of spring water after breakfast and dump them in a washtub. Maybe it’ll warm up enough by afternoon that Sherry can give those babies a good scrubbing later.”

  His mother nodded. “That would make me feel better,” she said. “You might as well bring up enough for several baths. We’re all getting ripe.”

  Jeff devoured his pancakes, lamenting that they were gone.

  “It’ll be like when I was a kid,” his mother said. “Everyone shared the same water, washing in order from oldest to youngest. My daddy was the only one that ever had clean bath water. Sounds nasty now but that’s the way things were.”

  Jeff frowned at his now empty plate.

  “Swallow them whole?” his mother asked.

  “No, just hungry I reckon,” he said, carrying his plate to the sink. He leaned over and kissed his mother on the head. “I’ll go carry that water.”