Purgatory Road

by Samuel Parker

  “I never thought I would be home again.” Tears drifted down her cheeks. “I just wanted to be home so bad.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m sorry, Mom.”

  Molly wept, expelling all the fear and loneliness of her experience. Making room. They held each other, mother and child, no longer alone.

  “Every time I close my eyes, I still see him. I know he’s dead, but I still see him.”

  “Then we’ll stay awake, me and you.”

  “Forever?”

  “Forever.”

  80

  Jack stepped off the plane with the aid of a walking stick, his new companion. The chain had done quick and dirty work to his hip bone. He sauntered up the Jetway with a limp and a grimace. The doctors assured him that the pain would subside with time, but gave less confidence that he would be able to walk without an aid going forward.

  Not exactly the memento he had hoped to return with from Las Vegas.

  Laura strolled beside him as they walked through O’Hare, back to the hustle and movement of Chicago life.

  Home.

  “Well, we’re back,” Jack said.

  “Yeah.”

  “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, right?”

  She smiled and gave him a kiss. He received it without reservation.

  After the airport, they made their way home. The once lonely house now seeming a new place of hope and love.

  Life settled in around them at a fast pace. Routine does that. It dulls the senses, bores a person into apathetic slumber. But the couple did their best, and when things got strained, they would talk about the desert, about the highway, about the mountain, and in the times of loneliness they would huddle back together in renewed comfort.

  History. It’s what they had again. A shared journey.

  They would talk of Boots, sitting on his porch “out there,” chewing on his tobacco and gazing at the dust and tumbleweed. They doubted they would ever see him again, and to Jack’s surprise, that saddened him.

  He tried to wrap his head around the mystery of it all. How their drive on that fateful day ended with them stuck on hell’s highway, trapped in a trailer with a hermit, and then up a mountain to confront a homicidal maniac. It made his head hurt just trying to connect all the pieces.

  Small steps of mystery.

  When he’d returned to work, his colleagues asked what had happened, why he had been gone so long, why was he now walking with a cane? But as with his new method of locomotion, his bluster had been crippled too.

  “Got in an accident, just glad to be home,” he would say, knowing full well how incomprehensible the real story was. It was his and Laura’s story, one that he would keep to himself.

  Laura would have times when she thought she would see Boots in a parking lot or a crowded shopping mall. She would find herself quickening her step to catch up with the old pedestrian, only to be disappointed at finding that it wasn’t him. She had a dull ache in the pit of her stomach that missed him, that had found comfort in his words and manner. At night she would dream of the front porch, the few days she had sat there with him.

  The highway.

  Whenever the thought of the near tragedy entered her mind, it quickly gave way to the longing of being in the company of Boots. And when she thought about the horror of the mountain, she remembered the words Boots had told her when he left to go get Jack.

  “You willin’ to do what it takes to get what you want? You willin’ to put yourself out there to help get back what’s been lost?”

  Had everything been orchestrated? Had the seeming chaos been scripted? Who was Boots, really?

  Whatever the answer, Laura was happy. Happy that Jack had returned to her. Not the old Jack from long ago and not the Jack of recent recollection. A Jack who had evolved into something new, grown from an experience that neither could explain but both agreed in time that it was an experience worth having.

  81

  Red drove out into the desert.

  He remembered a time when he was little, sitting in his mother’s prairie church. It was a funeral. He sat there fidgeting in his seat, five years old and in his brother’s hand-me-down suit jacket that was still two sizes too big. The wooden pew getting more uncomfortable with each passing drone of the preacher.

  The funeral was for a young man knifed in a bar fight. A son of one of his mother’s friends. He remembered his mom with her arms around a weeping woman, sobbing uncontrollably. The sunbeams cutting swaths across the thick air of the sanctuary.

  “It will be all right,” his mother said. “There is a reason for all this.”

  That was what she always said. Anytime tragedy struck her orbit. Repeated words that became more meaningless with every utterance.

  Red could see the day in photographic stills. Not a fluid memory, but snapshots of anguish, boredom . . . too young to grasp the full weight of what he was witnessing.

  Propping himself up on his knees, he had looked to the back of the church. Through the neighbors and townsfolk. He remembered the face of an old man.

  The man sat in the last pew, by himself. His weathered face cracked like leather, his beard hanging down in front of him. Unwashed and haggard, the old man stared at Red.

  The young boy stopped his fidgeting and stared back. All the other people at the service disappeared, and there was only the two. Old and young.

  The man smiled with his eyes, placed his hands on the pew in front of him, and stood up. He stepped out of his seat, turned, and walked out of the church, the opening door letting the morning light rush in like a tidal wave. Red got up from his seat, and walked out behind him.

  “Mister?”

  The old man turned to him.

  “What are you doing, mister?” Red said from the church steps.

  “I’m just checking in.”

  “But we aren’t supposed to leave until it’s over. Mom says we got to wait for the preacher to say bed’iction.”

  The old man laughed to himself. “Is that what she says? Well, you best get back in there before she finds out. Don’t want to end this day with a whipping now.”

  Red stood there staring. Silent.

  “Is there something you want to ask me?” the old man said.

  “Is there a reason for this? Mom says there’s a reason.”

  “What do you think?”

  The boy shuffled his feet, looking down as he prepared his answer. “I suppose so.”

  “Well, you listen to your mom. She’s a good woman,” he said as he turned to leave.

  “Mister . . . where’re you going?”

  The man with the boots stopped. “Oh, don’t worry. I’ll be around.”

  And with that, he sauntered off, leaving Red on the church steps.

  Through the years, he had thought of this encounter. When his wife died, and his mother was spitting out her clichés, he thought he might see that old-timer pop up again. It wasn’t rational, he knew that. But Red didn’t care. In his heart, he knew who the man was. The story from the couple and the runaway brought back the memory.

  Red kept driving, the hardpan and rock stretching out before him. The image of the old man etched in his mind deeper than the chisel marks on an old grave marker.

  And so he drove, not knowing where to go, but letting the wheel flow smoothly in his hand as if the car directed his path. The sun blazing overhead in its unending beatdown of the knocked-out desert floor. The suspension on the vehicle sweating under the constant jarring of uneven rock, sand, and brush. He drove throughout the morning, starting on the two-track that led up the mountain to where he had shot Colten, but turning north off road at the mountain’s base.

  He kept going, a mile past where all reason told him to turn back, his mind telling him that he was being ridiculous, that nothing was out here. He then turned the wheel east, the mountain range reflecting off the rearview mirror as the sun passed through the windshield and warmed his chest. He kept driving.

  In the distance he saw th
e faint shimmer of a tin roof, reflecting briefly and then disappearing. Appearing again. A beacon out in the wasteland. Words, dancing in his head.

  I’ll be around.

  1

  The day was born in darkness.

  Michael opened his eyes and saw nothing.

  Blackness.

  The motes in his eyes drifted across the void.

  His mouth was sealed with what felt like tape. Michael tried to lift himself and felt the hard knock of wood against his forehead. A light sprinkle of sand fell on his face, but he was blind to its source. He could only feel it as it dusted his lashes, scratching at his pupils. He raised his head slowly again until he felt the board press against his skin. He laid back down. His shoulders ached as well as his back. He tried to move his hands up to his eyes to rub the grit out of them but found they were bound together. He started breathing faster, nostrils flaring in the dark.

  He was as a newborn cast out into the vacuum of space.

  He could feel his heart beat faster as his mind raced to keep up with this discovery of himself. Michael could feel his nerves begin to fire in all his limbs as electric panic coursed through his body. He lifted his head again and hit the boards, not four inches above him.

  And again.

  Banging his head against the darkness with the dirt washing his face.

  He tugged at his arms. They were bound at the wrist and the tape dug into him with each movement. His feet were fastened together at the ankles as he tried to kick at the darkness. His knees found the roof of his coffin as well and sent a spark of pain up his thighs. The motion caused more dirt to fall into his open eyes. He felt as if they were thoroughly crusted with grime.

  Michael tried to force breath out of his mouth, but the tape’s seal held. He felt as if his nostrils were too small to supply the air he needed as he kicked around in his confined cell. He could feel the sweat start to form on his body as he lurched back and forth.

  Suddenly, he stilled. His mind slowly started to calm, moving from the rapid chaos of panic to the quiet, disembodied trance of a hopeless man.

  Breathe, he thought.

  Just breathe.

  The sound of his lungs echoed in his head as he worked to slow himself down, his breathing easing to long, deliberate exhales. He closed his eyes to shut out the blackness and felt the sandpaper eyelids grind his retinas with fire.

  Just breathe.

  Michael could feel his pulse dissipate from the thunderous bass drum to a softer beat. His mind began to clear and assess his situation. Flailing around was not an option. If he wanted it all to end, as he had sometimes in life wished it would, then he could just go on doing what he was doing until the air ran out or the sand from above buried him in an hourglass of his own making. But his thoughts focused on hope, as they always seemed to. And so he willed his body to soften, to cooperate with his mind.

  He focused on his hands. One by one he touched fingertip to fingertip, thumb to thumb, index to index, until he was assured they were all there. They were. For some reason this brought him a sense of comfort.

  He tried to bring his hands to his face and failed several times. The box he was in wouldn’t allow him to move his elbows from his sides, and when he kept them tucked in, his hands would press against the ceiling before he could bring them up to his chest.

  Breathe.

  Slowly and methodically he started to rotate his wrists back and forth, attempting to loosen the binding. It felt like duct tape. It was impossible for him to guess how many times it might have been wrapped around his wrists. He concentrated on his breathing and the rhythmic turns of his hands.

  Inhale, twist; exhale, twist.

  The hairs on his arm pulled with each turn until Michael was sure there were none left. He told himself he had all the time in the world, or at the least, all the time he had left, to get his hands free.

  He kept twisting his wrists until the skin burned. In the dark he felt as if it had rubbed down to the bone. The dirt dripping from above him got under the tape, and though it worked as an antidote to the adhesive, it also added to the grinding down of flesh he felt with each twist.

  Eventually he loosened the tape enough to turn his hands and grab onto each wrist. The tape had rolled in spots, and he could feel the stickiness of it mixed with warm fluid. It felt like raw skin and blood. In this position, and keeping his elbows in, he was able to force his hands up to his face where he instantly grabbed the strip across his mouth and pulled it free.

  Like a skin diver resurfacing from a long dive, Michael gulped in the stale moldy air around him with an open mouth. The dirty and confined area flooded his senses, but he did not care at the moment. With his mouth free, he bit into the binding at his wrists, yanking and pulling with his teeth at tape and skin. His hands came free with ripping fire and he screamed.

  Now unbound, Michael was able to feel around his confinement. He was, as he figured, in a box. He could feel the rough-hewn pine all around him. The cheapness of the wood and the fact that it was still holding up meant that he was not buried too deep. He assumed that too much earth would have come crashing in already. True or not, it added weight to a sliver of hope.

  Michael had never been buried alive, but his mind offered up the blueprint of escape as if it had been programmed with the script for survival. Up. Up was the way to freedom. Scratch, claw upward. He had to get to the surface quickly—that or he would suffocate or be crushed before he knew it.

  In the dark, he beat against the boards until his hands shot white-hot pains up his forearms. The dirt dropped onto his face as one of the boards cracked, filling his mouth and absorbing the air from his lungs. He spewed out the earth as he beat and dug and scraped upward.

  The ground came down heavy around him like the pillars of Samson. His fingers gripped the soil and pulled.

  He was a rhythmic engine of adrenaline, pushing up against the world and then shoving the incoming dirt down to the end of the box. Over and over again until the lid started to give more and more.

  As the dirt flowed in, Michael worked to push it to the corners of the box. It was damp and clumpy but not tightly packed, two things incredibly in his favor. He worked furiously, his muscles screaming. His pulse pounding in his ears, stifled by the packed ground.

  Then he felt it. His hand punched through to the cool air of the living world. With one last colossal effort, he got his feet under him and drove up through the loosening soil, breaking out to his waist into the majestic air of night.

  Michael pulled himself out of the grave.

  His whole body screamed for oxygen and the open air embraced his constricted muscles like a soothing nothingness. He lay on the ground and looked skyward, but his scratched and swollen eyes were packed in a gritty embalmer’s salve, obscuring his vision into a watery blur. His breath formed small wisps of vapor in the dark and then dissipated.

  He was in a forest. He dragged himself away from the entrance of his grave and braced himself against a tree. This was the closest to death that he had ever been, but he knew this was just the beginning. It would not end here. They would not let this rest. They would never let it rest until he was buried for good.

  2

  Michael ripped the last of the tape from his ankles and staggered to his feet. The smell of earth and mold permeated his senses as the chill of early autumn passed through him like a phantom breeze. The moon was out tonight, and it illuminated the woods with a menace, a black-and-white world on the verge of preparing itself to sleep through the upcoming winter, itself to be buried by the cold indifference of Mother Nature.

  His eyes burned with the scratched rubbing of his lids still caked with dirt as he peered into the darkness. It was impossible to get his bearings. A blind man in a maze. All he could smell was the grave. But he listened to the quiet of the woods. Faintly he could hear running water in the distance. He took a step toward the sound, using the tree as a crutch and holding out one arm to break a fall that was all but assured. The noise o
f his own steps masked the water. He took a step, listened, took another.

  Step.

  Quiet.

  Listen.

  Repeat.

  His body was wrecked. The men who had jumped him had pushed chemicals into his cells and then tenderized the muscles. He could feel the bruises on his back and chest rub against his clothing with each movement. His legs throbbed as if the sinews were wrapped too tightly around the bone. His hands were numb from the tape that had cut off his circulation. One finger felt dislocated, an issue that, with a tug and a shriek of agony, he quickly remedied.

  Each step was a torturous effort, a willing of the mind to force the body forward.

  Step.

  Quiet.

  Listen.

  Repeat.

  Soon the river could be heard consistently, and he stumbled forward with arms outstretched, knocking branches out of his way, tripping on exposed roots that lay hidden underfoot. Michael felt his way down the bank but soon lost all sense of up and down, and fell. He rolled down the embankment, adding bruises to his already beaten body, until he came to rest on the rocks next to the river. He got to his hands and knees and crawled to the water.

  His throat was bone dry and the cool water shocked his system. The burning thirst overcame the repugnant smell of the river, and after a few gulps, he took a deep breath and plunged his face into the depths.

  The coldness of the creek stung his senses, but he held himself under, flushing the earth from his eyes. The sensation of no pain in his sockets brought him back to the surface and he collapsed.

  With his blurred vision slightly improved, his head resting on stone and sand, Michael peered out across the river, the moonlight slashing a gouge in the black water.

  A puzzle piece locked into place in his brain, a sense of reassurance that he was closer to knowing where on earth he was. There was only one major river near Coldwater, a river named after the town or vice versa, and Michael knew this must be it. Coldwater River. From what he could tell, however, it was a portion that he was not familiar with.