“So, you’re just going to drop me off?”
“Alex…” I wasn’t clever enough to talk my way out of the situation. I watched the RV surrender to the will of the majority and move along, then followed her around the Jeep. “You’ll be safer down there. Trust me.”
“And you’re going to just go back to work? Right now you are the only person I trust.” Alex slid into the driver’s seat and commandeered the rear-view mirror for beautification purposes. I watched her reflection but couldn’t see her expression. I hoped she was smiling. I knew she wasn’t. Her blue eyes were a shade closer to the color of the river than they were this time yesterday.
She said, “My mom specifically said I had to stay with you.”
“I thought ‘you’ was a collective ‘you’ meaning me or my family.” I leaned against the roll bar.
“No, Henry, that’s not at all what I meant.” She pulled the door shut and locked it jokingly, then returned to the rear-view mirror.
“Alex, let me just say this…” In my mind I tried to think of all the things she’d want to hear in this situation and ran them against all the things I wanted to say—that this Lewis thing would’ve been better handled by the cops, that all this ‘protection’ stuff was bullshit. In the end, I decided to split the difference. “You know, this idea that we can somehow protect—”
“Henry.” She froze, gripped by an unseen fear.
I tried to follow her eyes down the street but didn’t see anything unusual.
“Hey asshole!” A quivering voice from behind me shouted like a puppy not yet ready to bark.
I turned around.
The smell of Billy Lewis hit me a second before Billy Lewis did. Fishing bait and body odor filled my nose, but the scent of the blood that followed washed it right away. My blood.
“Henry!” Alex yelled.
“Alex, start the Jeep.” Blood dripped into my cupped hand as I regained my composure and faced him. Shaggy, copper hair stuck out from under his ball cap like hay from a loosely wrapped bale. Freckles made him look like he was twelve instead of twenty-three.
But he wouldn’t look me in the eye. Even the reinforcement he’d brought didn’t look entirely committed to Billy’s ambush. The lanky kid lingered near the old pickup’s cab. Must’ve been lower on the pay scale than Darren’s guys.
“That’s your backup?” I hit him with a quick jab that bloodied his lip before he could get another shot in. Ben always told me to go for the jaw.
After the follow-through, I knocked his hat to the ground and snatched him by the hair. I pushed him down, down, down to the pavement where he’d feel at home with the road kill and dog shit.
“Call my granddad,” Billy yelled. His compadre backed into the old Lewis Lumber Chevy and shouted into the radio.
It took me a moment to realize what had just happened. “You just bait?” “Hold him, Billy,” the other kid shouted from the cab. “They’re coming.”
I stood up, bringing Billy with me. Further down Grant Street two more trucks advanced—big red pickups with Lewis Lumber logos on the side.
“Go, Alex.” I said, stepping backward, pulling Billy with me. “Time to split mud, girl.”
Charlie ran up Sugarloaf Road toward Grant, grinding through gears and revving that big old engine. Billy’s own truck blocked the road, forcing Charlie onto the shoulder.
Down on Nedly Street, Darren threaded his truck through all the rental rafters making their way to the put-in. The church group turned and watched the commotion. Joel from Ohiopyle Trading Post cussed Darren from his big porch. Darren never once let off the horn.
“Move it, you stupid motherfuckers!” Charlie Lewis waved for Billy’s friend to move the truck. “Billy, you worthless shit! Hold ‘em!”
“Move, Alex!” With Billy still in a headlock, I got in the passenger seat. “How fast can you run, Billy?”
Alex found first gear and we rolled toward the intersection with Nedly. Billy clawed at my arms, and right before Alex found second, I let him go. He rolled in the gravel on the berm.
“Where’s your phone?” I said, still watching over my shoulder as the Lewises sorted themselves out on the street behind us.
“My phone’s packed,” Alex said. She pulled her seatbelt across her lap.
“Where?” I unzipped her smallest bag and started to poke through it. A case of beer bottles filled with old motor oil rattled as Alex hit a gigantic pothole.
“Suitcase, I think. I don’t know. You said I wouldn’t get a signal.” Hair blew across her face. She swatted at it as she slowed for the stop sign at
Garfield.
“Why are you stopping? Go!”
“Don’t yell at me!” She put the Jeep back in gear as she drifted through the intersection, still looking both ways.
“It’s fine. I’m sorry. Put it in neutral and let me drive.” I stood, like I was going to hop over the center console and switch her places.
“I can’t stop now. Look.” Squealing tires and a blaring horn made me jerk my head back around. A fourth truck, a brand new red Chevy with a Lewis Lumber logo on the side backed down Lincoln Street then pulled onto the road behind us.
“This is crazy.” She sniffed away small tears.
Charlie Lewis passed Billy’s pickup on the shoulder. Gravel flew into parked cars as he spun out. Lewis came after us without regard to tourists, kids on bikes, boaters carrying kayaks across the street.
“Shit. Just go then. Fast. Take a left up here.” I buckled my seatbelt, unable to do much more than just hang on.
Alex slowed as we got to Falls Market. People were crossing to get coffee and Clif Bars. I reached over Alex’s arm and jammed on our horn. “Fucking move!” “Henry?” Alex yelled over the wind rushing into the Jeep’s open interior. Tree branches created alternating patches of shadow and sunlight that flashed on her face as she drove. “I’m scared.”
“Faster. It’s okay. You have to gun it.” Doug, the ranger at the put-in looked over his glasses and reached for his radio as we sped past. When we crossed Meadow Run and I looked back over my shoulder. There was a big red pickup in each lane.
“Left!” I pointed and shook my finger. The RV was creeping toward the intersection with Dinner Bell Road. “Pass it.”
“You can’t yell at me anymore, okay?” She clung to steering wheel like stink to a skunk. “It’s upsetting me and—”
“And you don’t know where you’re going!”
Alex hesitated, then swung the Jeep quickly to the left. I slammed into the passenger side door. She bit her lower lip and checked the rear-view. The driver of the RV flipped her off and gave us the horn. He drifted over the center line.
The rush of wind picked up as she accelerated down a straightaway. Past the booth where guests checked-in. Past farms where the smell of earthy manure mingled with the scent of newly cut hay in the fields. When we passed back through the forest there was only the clean breath of running water and respired oxygen. The laurels weren’t yet ready to pop, but the streams and fresh green leaves welcomed them anyway. Now they were little more than a green blur.
The rush forbade us from slowing down. Our eyes met, and for an instant we laughed at the speed. Adrenaline gave us a good little buzz. The wind tugging at my cheeks even forced a little smile from me.
“They’re gone,” she yelled over the rush.
I turned around to look. The wind changed pitch as it went from one ear to the other. But it was true, I couldn’t see them.
The engine let out a slight whir, an instantaneous pause as she dropped it from third into fourth. Too fast for windy old Dinner Bell Road.
“Do you want to take over?” she said.
“No, I don’t want to stop until we get home. Keep going.” I looked one last time, just to be sure.
“Who were all those people? They weren’t all related, were they?”
“Hell no, probably Charlie’s employees.”
“My mother warned me they were dangerous.”
Alex didn’t trust the mirror and stole a glance over her shoulder.
“You have no idea.” I watched the side-view.
A new world sped by. Hemlocks pushed out memories of February snow drifts. Turkey buzzards occupied the space in my mind that winter crows once did. Red-tailed hawks screeched as they took wing after field mice. Endless thermals would lift them into space if they would just let them. Ancient buildings—barns and homes—represented a human element, property to be protected or lost. I checked the mirror again, even though I wasn’t sure why. The mirror, as honest as it was, would never tell me if we were speeding away from trouble, or toward it.
“Back up! Back!” I shouted. The roadblock sprung to view as we rounded a bend just past Bruceton Mills. “We shouldn’t have come this way.”
“I thought we lost them!”
Tires squealed. The smell of hot rubber rushed into my nose.
“They must’ve come down 381 through Gibbon Glade,” I muttered, but it was too late. “Straight back. Go.”
She had a hard time keeping the wheel straight in reverse. We dropped onto the shoulder.
I grabbed the wheel. “Gas,” I said. “Hit the gas.”
We managed to get the Jeep back onto the road and crossed the center line. Two pickups blocked the road ahead. A third slowed to a stop
just behind them. As we backed up, Lewis and some of his men scrambled into their cabs. Charlie’s pickup was the first out.
“For being a fat bastard with a gimp, he sure can move.” I ducked as some low branches scraped through the Jeep’s open top. “Keep your eyes on the road. Doing good.”
But the roadblock scared me too, jumping out at us like a raccoon from a trash can. Either this was overkill or something else, something bigger than Alex supposedly speaking ill of the Lewises. The red pickup came fast. The rumble of its engine preceded it down the road like wind ahead of a storm.
I pointed frantically. “Dirt road. Here.”
Alex ground gears as she tried to find first.
“Shit.” It was the first time I’d ever heard her swear. The Jeep lurched forward in a sickening gurgle.
Stalled.
“It’s okay. Take your time.” Trying to mask my panic with calm was like trying to catch fish without a worm. Or a hook.
The red truck accelerated as he came within a half mile. “He’s going to ram us.” The words came out louder than I had intended.
Alex wiped tears from her eyes then turned the key. The Jeep crawled forward as she eased it into gear. The look of sheer surprise on Charlie’s face as he overshot us almost pushed the butterflies out of my belly.
“Nice and easy now.”
The scrape of the oil pan against the road’s shoulder had the same effect on me as fingernails on a chalkboard. “Alex, listen to me. At the bottom is the Big Sandy and a chance to lose them. You got to go, though. Be dangerous, okay?”
Mud splashed onto the windshield and into my hair. “Stay against the hillside. If he catches us you need to stay against the hill. That’s the most important thing.”
She nodded.
Over my shoulder the disorder began to reorganize. The old red Chevy, Billy’s truck, slowed in time to follow us off-road instead of overshooting the turn like Charlie did. But the new red Lewis Lumber Ford was right on his tailgate and Charlie Lewis was shouting at his grandson to get the hell out of the way.
Lucky for us, Billy had nowhere to go. The convoy careened down the edge of the canyon. To our right a sheer face of Greenbrier Limestone kept us hemmed in. To the left was the long drop to the stream itself. The sound of rapids and waterfalls barely overcame the sound of engines struggling to stay in first, the most obvious sign that this once high-speed chase had taken a dramatically different pace.
“Watch out,” Alex said as this road—goat path really— shoved the Jeep up into the branches of an old white oak. Young, green acorns fell into the seats. A shower of leaves filled our wake.
“You have to go a little faster. Sorry, I know you’re nervous, but you have to go.” I adjusted the side-view mirror.
But she misinterpreted my encouraging tone as criticism and shot back, “I’m going as fast as I can.”
“No, Alex, you can go faster.”
A tremendous scrape ripped through the trees. I watched the road behind us half expecting to see my axle laying there. Instead, Billy’s old red Chevy rubbed paint onto limestone as Charlie passed on his left.
“Shit. New plan.” I turned and sank into the seat.
“You have one this time?” Her voice dropped as we bounced over a muddy rut created by recent runoff. I hung on to the roll bar.
“Still working on it.” I bit my lip and looked in the glove box for a can of snuff.
The red truck lurched forward in a more deliberate attempt to catch up.
“The only thing I can think of…” I said while trying not to get tossed from the bucking Jeep. “I’m going to have to get out—”
“No you’re not,” Alex said.
“I’m not abandoning you, but this here, it ain’t working. Trust me. You keep on going.”
“What are you planning?” Her quick glances searched for comfort in my expression. But I could only shrug.
In the back sat a case of beer bottles next to the emergency tow cable. My tool box had been buried beneath Alex’s stuff. I placed the bottles on the seat next to me and said, “I’m going to change the pace again.”
I picked up one of the warm beer bottles. Spent motor oil coated the sides like snot.
The Jeep fishtailed in the layer of old leaves that covered the slimy clay. I held onto the roll bar to keep my balance. “Doing good, Alex.”
The red Ford sprayed mud onto the windshield of the truck behind it and Charlie Lewis closed in. His face was an exaggeration of twisted features. His thin lips pulled back tight across his teeth. His gin-blossomed nose and bulging eyes reminded me of a belsnickle’s mask.
Alex slowed to round a sharp switchback, then hit the gas again. Inertia and centrifugal force knocked me onto the floor behind the passenger seat.
“Shit.” A goose egg formed on the back of my head, just below the whorl on my scalp.
“Shit.” I tried to rub the pain away then grabbed the heavy tow cable too. Twenty feet of half inch cable may not be enough to stop a truck, but there were a lot of other things I could do with it.
“You all right?” Alex asked. “Fine. Where are we at?”
Alex pulled away from Charlie at the bottom of the first of four switchbacks. I leaned out of the hairpin turn as the road doubled back on itself. These old logging roads ran around the canyon like contour lines on a topographic map, never gaining elevation, never falling. The sloped switchbacks were built to connect the parallel roads. We headed back upstream, back up the canyon.
“Slow down a sec.” I grabbed a carton of nails from my toolbox, opened them and shook them all over the road behind us.
“What?” Alex let the Jeep drift.
“I’m going to get out here. Keep going. Whatever you do, don’t stop ‘til you get to the bottom. Meet you at the bridge.”
“Be careful.”
“I will. Now go, okay? Burn wind.” I jumped onto the road with the tow cable over my shoulder. I reached back, grabbed the beer bottles and banged on the tailgate a few times. “See you at the bridge.”
Alex stepped on the gas and bolted like a rabbit out of high grass before disappearing around a shallow corner. The Jeep’s steady rumble faded into the trees.
Charlie Lewis’s red Ford appeared from the hairpin. With a flick of a finger, I encouraged him to come closer. “Fucking mouth-breather.”
He saw me and hit his gas. The truck spun a little in the mud. Charlie’s passenger had a shotgun resting on the passenger side-view mirror.
I planted my feet. Then like a pitcher about to throw a shut-out, I fired the first beer bottle at the center of his windshield.
The bottle fell short.
I busted my nut way too early. My hand shook with adrenaline.
“Aw fuck it.” I stepped closer to the edge of the road and threw the next one. It hit the hood and bounced over the cab. “Shit!”
Charlie kept coming. My plan to stop him became an act of self-defense. Before throwing the third bottle I paused. Just for a second. I’d been trying too hard to get a batter to go down swinging. I needed to change tactics. I needed to throw a runner out at home.
Holding the bottle near the middle, so the oil wouldn’t fly all over, I took a deep breath, wound up and let it loose.
The bottle exploded against the windshield with a sticky haze of brown sludge. Charlie Lewis swerved into the hillside on his left to avoid rolling into the canyon. I threw another one and connected with the windshield again.
His passenger lurched and the gun fell onto the shoulder before taking a bad hop over the edge. He tapped a tentative hand on his scalp to check for blood. It was Charlie’s right-hand man, Eddie Tasso. Janie used to be best friends with his daughter, Lucinda.
Charlie pounded the hood with his pistol.
I threw another. But instead of aiming for the windshield I aimed for Charlie. It shattered against his open door. He wiped oil from his face. “Stop, you cocksucker. On your knees.”
I picked the tow cable out of the mud. All around, cobbles of Greenbrier Limestone weathered out from the ledge along the road. Some were as small as golf balls, others big as softballs. At my feet I found a nice round one, smaller than a baseball, perfect for a slider.
Charlie yelled as the stone hit the windshield inches from his fat, fumbling paw.
“Motherfucker son of a bitch,” he yelled. He fired two rounds at me.
Stepping into the trees, I yelled, “You’re taking this too far. What’s your fucking problem?” Trying to talk a black bear down from an empty beehive would’ve been easier.
Just then, I spotted Tasso reaching behind the seat. It was either for a first aid kit or a hunting rifle. I dropped down the slope before I could find out which.
Hellbender (Murder Ballads and Whiskey Book 2) Page 7
