by Jessie Cooke
Sledge didn’t say a word until they were outside and on their bikes. That’s when he looked at Maz and said, “I barely understand two words that guy says…but did he mention witches?”
“Nah,” Maz said as he got ready to start his bike. “I didn’t hear anything about witches.” Sledge was going to hate where they were going. He didn’t want to scare him too badly before they got there.
The caves and the ridge were not officially called “Witch Ridge.” That was a name the Cajun people who lived in the area for centuries had given it. The story behind it was one Maz wouldn’t tell his already spooked friend. After the Louisiana Purchase, the US and Spain had another falling out over the actual boundary between Texas and Louisiana. To solve that problem without any bloodshed, both sides agreed that the land in between the two territories wouldn’t belong to either of them. That meant that anyone could move into that territory and claim it…and they did. First, it was an outlaw of the Jesse James caliber. He made the caves his home, and was said to have terrorized anyone passing through, often walking them off the cliff when he was finished with them, where they would ultimately become food for the wild animals that roamed the swamps. He was said to have been run off in the late 1800’s, at least by Cajun legend. He was run off by a group of women, the story goes…women who wanted a quiet place to practice their witchcraft. For over one hundred years the stories circulated, each one becoming bigger and more sinister than the last. Whenever any local went missing, they’d say a prayer that the witches hadn’t gotten them. Everyone had a different opinion about what went on up at Witch Ridge. It had since been taken over by the government and the caves were off limits. Two things made Blackheart think that might be where they’d find Jammer. The first and most obvious was that he was looking for a quiet place to end his own life, and the second was that Blackheart was one of the people who found Jamie Bartlett, at the bottom of that ridge with a bullet in his head, all those years ago. Maz only hoped that he and Sledge weren’t about to be treated to a repeat performance of the gruesome scene.
The terrain got rocky for a while and they both had to keep their bandannas tied over their noses and mouths to keep the dirt out. Suddenly, they were back in the swamp and the dirt and dry weeds had turned into mud and muck and two or three feet of water in places. Maz stopped his bike and Sledge pulled up next to him. Turning off his bike and pulling the bandanna off his face he said, “What now?”
Maz smiled at him, knowing he was about to pop a gasket. “We walk.”
Sledge surveyed the area in front and around them. Where they sat, nothing but swamp could be seen. “Walk where…exactly?”
Maz pointed to a rock structure that painted the sky about six or seven miles in the distance. “That’s where the caves are.”
“No fucking way. We’re going to walk through the fucking swamp? The swamp that’s filled with alligators and snakes and shit? That swamp? No fucking way. Huh-uh, not happening. You’re fucking insane.” Maz calmly got off the bike, took some wet wipes out of the backpack, and cleaned off his face and hands. He drank a bottle of water then and bent down to re-lace his boots. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“You don’t have to go, brother. I’m not going to hold it against you. But I have to do this.”
“Why? Because you’re fucking suicidal? If he went that way he’s probably dead already.”
“Maybe, but I came this far, I have to see it through. Seriously, no hard feelings if you don’t want to do this. I get it.”
Maz continued with readying himself, making sure the handgun was loaded and he had a knife tucked into his boots and one in his jeans pocket. He tucked the cuffs of his jeans into his riding boots and then put on his gloves and did the same with the sleeves of his shirt. He tucked all of his hair underneath his skullcap and then took a spray bottle out and began spraying himself with it from head to toe.
“What’s that?” Sledge said.
“Alligator repellent,” Maz told him.
Sledge looked suspicious. “No shit? That stuff work?”
Maz shrugged. “I’ve heard it does. A lot of homeowners around here swear by it. They pour buckets of it on their lawn and around their houses to keep the gators away.”
“Tell you what I’d do to keep them sonsabitches away…fucking move.”
Maz chuckled. “Yeah, well, most of the people that live way down here just don’t know nothing else. This place, this land, even the gators, it’s their life.” He finished spraying down to his boots and Sledge asked the question Maz was hoping he wouldn’t.
“What’s in it?”
“Mostly ammonia,” Maz said. When he didn’t go on Sledge said:
“And?”
Maz made a face. “Human urine.”
“I’m sorry? Is urine a fancy French word that sounds like what we English people call piss? Because I’m sure that you didn’t just tell me I sat here and watched you spray your body down with piss.”
Maz shrugged. “Not like I’m asking you to spray yourself with it.” He slung the backpack over his shoulder.
“Good thing, because I’d tell you to go fuck yourself, you crazy-ass Frenchman.”
Maz laughed. “You can go on back to the main road. I’ll meet you up there later.” With the pistol in one hand and a long stick he’d found in the other, he took off through the mud, sinking in a little deeper with each step he took. He wasn’t any happier about wading the swamp than Sledge was…but he had come this far, and he wasn’t going to have to live with finding out that Jammer ate a bullet, after he decided to hightail it home.
“Hey!” He turned in the direction of Sledge’s voice. His friend was off his bike and his jeans were tucked into his boots. He had the spray bottle in his hand and he said, “You ever tell anyone I sprayed myself with piss you’ll wish one of them gators had eaten you.”
Maz had to fight to keep a straight face. “Noted,” he said.
25
They walked for hours, mostly in water that was two to three feet deep. Every so often they’d come to a muddy little island, and after Maz beat the bushes with his stick to make sure nothing was going to suddenly come alive and have them for lunch, they would sit and rest for a while, but since Maz estimated the trip up would take close to six hours, they didn’t rest for long. The trek back in the dark would be the worst part…especially if they were too late to save Jammer. So far, they hadn’t seen any gators. Maz knew they probably wouldn’t. The reptiles were nocturnal animals so unless they tripped over one taking a nap, they would probably be okay until the sun went down. Poor Sledge looked like he was barely hanging onto his sanity, though, especially when one of the jumping fish would make a splash behind him. But he kept going, and that was what Maz called bravery.
After almost five hours of walking, sweating, cursing, and smelling like piss, they came up on the first of the many caves along the ridge. Maz stopped and told Sledge, “Be careful of walking straight out of any openings. The ridge will be there sometimes, and other times it won’t. The lower ones, it’s not a big deal, but as we start climbing, there will be more, and people have been known to walk right out of them and fall to their death.”
“This place is just such a fucking joy. I don’t know why more people don’t live here,” Sledge said. Chuckling at that, Maz pulled a little flashlight out of his pocket, switched it on, and moved into the cave. It wasn’t that dark. Maz could see light coming in from the other side as soon as he stepped in. The cave was narrow and short and there was nothing there other than a few beer cans and some cigarette butts, probably from the last group of teenagers who came up there to party. It was a rite of passage almost with the young ones in that area, and Maz had been there many times. If his memory served him right, however, the short cave would lead them into a much longer, winding one. He stepped out into the sunlight and right back into the second cave. This was the one he remembered the best from when he was a kid. It was where he’d had his first kiss…and then three weeks later,
got his first blowjob. He was careful not to touch any of the flat rocks for fear of what might have been left behind by some hormone-infused teen. Of course…he was already wearing piss, so what did it really matter?
That cave led into another and another. He was hot and tired and on the verge of saying “fuck it” when he heard the almost silent click of the safety being taken off a gun. He stopped so suddenly that Sledge ran into him and almost knocked him down. Sledge started to talk, but Maz put his hand up to silence him and said, “Johnny Bartlett? Jammer? Are you here?” His deep voice bounced off the smooth walls of the cave. Water dripped somewhere and the faint scratching of a bat or a swamp rat could be heard in the background, but no human. Breathing heavily, waiting for the sound of the bullet that would take his life, Maz said again, “Jammer? Hey, Dax sent us. We’re from the Westside Skulls in Cali. I’m Maz, this is Sledge. Dax just wants to make sure you’re okay…”
“Don’t fucking move.” The sound of the whispered, baritone voice sent chills running down Maz’s arms.
“Jammer, I have a gun, but just for protection. I’m going to…”
“Throw it in the dirt in front of you, your knife too, and your phones…whatever you have on you.” Maz looked at Sledge and before either had time to act Jammer said, “Now. Do it fucking now or I’ll kill you.” They both did what he asked, tossing everything in a pile in the dirt in front of them, and then they went back to holding their hands up over their heads. Maz’s eyes were searching the darkness around them, trying to get a glimpse at least of who they were dealing with. He didn’t see another living soul and the next time that Jammer spoke, there was a second there that Maz worried he was a ghost.
“Okay,” Maz said, as nonthreateningly as he could. “We’re unarmed now. Jammer…will you come out and talk to us?”
“Why do you talk like some snooty French waiter?”
Sledge laughed. Maz shot him a dirty look and said, “I was raised in New Orleans by my father and my French maman. English is my second language.”
“Doesn’t sound like Louisiana French to me.”
Maz couldn’t believe all they’d gone through to get there, and Jammer wanted to talk about his accent. But, since he was the only one with a gun, and Maz wasn’t interested in having a hole in his chest, he said, “It’s not. She was from Paris. I picked up her accent.”
“Sounds kind of uppity,” he said. Sledge laughed again. Maz rolled his eyes.
“I guess it does. Can we talk about you now? What you’re doing out here?”
Jammer suddenly stepped out from behind a rock. He looked vaguely like the picture Maz had of him, but a lot rougher around the edges. He was about Maz’s height, a little over six foot. He had light brown hair that looked like it was growing out from a military cut, sticking up on top. His eyes were a piercing green, the darkest green Maz had ever seen. He had a few days or more of growth on his face and it was beginning to spread down his neck. His beard was a shade darker than the hair on his head. He was dirty and he looked like a mountain man…the Ruger he was holding on them, in a hand that looked as steady as a rock, topped off the picture perfectly.
“Dax sent you?” he asked. He sounded confused about that.
“Yes. He wants to know you’re okay.”
“I cut their throats,” he said, softly. Maz and Sledge glanced at each other but neither of them said anything. After what seemed like an hour, Jammer went on, “It was easy. They were stoned…it was like slicing through butter.” Maz tried not to cringe at that, especially since the large Bowie knife on Jammer’s hip was glinting off the sun. “It was so easy,” he repeated. “Too easy. A human being shouldn’t be able to kill that easily and then just go on with his life.”
“They hurt your girl,” Sledge said. “Any man would have wanted to kill them.”
Jammer nodded, slowly. “Any man would have wanted to. He might have even done it. He would have used a gun or beat them to death with his fists. Me, I sunk a knife into their throats, wiped the blood off the blade on my pants, and went to have a hamburger because I hadn’t eaten all day. That makes me something more than a pissed-off old man…honestly, she wasn’t even really my old lady yet. I don’t know if it ever would have gone that far. But when I found her there, something in me just snapped, and I was on autopilot for the rest of that night. It wasn’t until I had my dinner and started to head home for bed that it dawned on me that normal people wouldn’t be so calm about killing three people, no matter how badly they needed it.”
“I’ve heard you were a hero in the army. I guess that could make a man a little desensitized to death,” Maz said.
“I wasn’t a hero, but yeah, I saw plenty of death…caused plenty of it. Problem is, I never took any pleasure in it before…but I did this time. I’m not sure what kind of monster that makes me.”
“The human kind,” Sledge said. “Those guys you killed, they were the monsters. You probably saved a dozen or more people pain or death by taking them out. Far as most of the world’s population is concerned, you were just taking out the trash.”
“It was that easy,” he said. “Like taking out the trash.” Jammer was obsessing over how easy it had been for him…yet here he was, fifteen hundred miles from home, beating himself up over it…virtually holding a gun to his own head. Maz saw that as their only opportunity.
“You hate that it was so easy, huh?” Maz said. “That you walked away from killing three people with no feelings about it?” Sledge was looking at him like he wasn’t sure that was the best direction for him to take, but Maz went on. “Afraid it makes you some kind of killer…or it just confirms what you already thought about yourself. You know, last time I was up your way, I met a guy named Garrett…you know him? He’s a big guy, like the fucking Incredible Hulk. He used to ride with a club out of Vegas, but he went nomad for the Skulls a few years back.”
“Yeah, I know him,” Jammer said. “He’s good people.”
“He was a sniper in the army.”
“Yeah.”
“He was a contract killer for his club.”
“He never killed anyone that didn’t need killing,” Jammer said.
“I agree, but did you know he almost killed himself?” Jammer didn’t answer him so Maz went on, “He hated himself for what he thought he’d become…but you know what he told me? He finally figured out that hating himself was just the guilt eating away at him.”
“I know how he felt,” Jammer said.
“Right? Because you have guilt eating away at you right now. But you know what guilt is? Do you know what Garrett finally figured out about his?” Again, Jammer didn’t answer him, so he went on. “Guilt means you have a conscience. Monsters don’t have a conscience. You may have enjoyed killing those three lowlifes, but I doubt you’d feel that same thrill cutting my throat and my buddy’s right now, would you?” Jammer didn’t answer him, but Sledge gave him a look that almost made him laugh. Ignoring Sledge, he said, “Thing is, Garrett met a girl, made her his old lady, has his kid on a regular basis, and has another baby on the way. He’s doing good things for the club on the road. He has a good life, one that he didn’t think he deserved. You can have a good life too, Jammer, but you have to put that gun down and come back with us. Dax said if you want out of the club, you have a free pass…he just wants to know you’re okay.”
Jammer looked far away again and said, “My old man killed himself, right here.”
“I heard. How did that make you feel?”
Jammer chuckled and said, “You a fucking social worker or what?”
Maz smiled and said, “A man with the talents you have holds a gun on me, I’m whatever the fuck he needs.”
Jammer laughed at that. Suddenly he was quiet again and when he spoke he said, “Garrett’s a cool guy and he’d give you the shirt off his back if you needed it.” He lowered the gun to his side and Maz tried not to sigh in relief too loudly. “Today’s the anniversary of my old man’s death. It dawned on me that maybe that’s
why this all happened when it did. Maybe it was fate or something.”
“You think your old man wants you to die?” Maz asked him. “Your aunt told me he was proud as hell of you, so that’s hard to imagine.”
“He wouldn’t be proud of me now.”
“Probably not,” Sledge said. Maz glanced at him, but he kept going. “He’d probably be pissed as hell that he raised a quitter.”
“Fuck you, you don’t know my fucking life,” Jammer said.
“Nah, I don’t. What I do know is I waded waist-deep in gator-infested water to save your stupid ass only to get here and realize you don’t want help, you want to wallow in self-pity and take the coward’s way out instead of changing your fucking life if you’re not happy with it. Now, it’s gonna get dark soon and my big ass is not making that five-hour trek just about the time them gators wake up hungry. So, you can either come with us, or not, but I’m leaving.”
“I’ve still got the gun,” Jammer said.
“Shoot me then, or shove it up your own whiney ass, I don’t care.” Sledge turned and didn’t even look at Maz as he started back down through the next cave. With a shrug, Maz followed him. Neither of them knew if they’d done the right thing or not, but it was obvious to both of them, maybe from the shit they’d both been through, that unless and until Jammer wanted to change, there was nothing anyone else could do to help him.
They walked in silence, partially because there was nothing to say and partially because they didn’t want to make any unnecessary noises as the sun began to fade. They didn’t have a gun, or a knife, and the “gator repellent,” for all that was worth, had probably washed or sweated off by then. They were about a mile from their bikes when it got full-on dark. Every noise in the water sent a trickle of fear through Maz’s body. He’d grown up out here, but this was the first time he was stupid enough to tromp through the swamp after dark. A sudden heavy splash behind them caused his heart to nearly jump out of his chest. He and Sledge both turned toward it just as the bright light came on and blinded them.
