by Steph Post
Jack O’ Lantern knocked the kickstand down and lifted his leg over the seat of his bike. Slim Jim watched him.
“What’re you doing? Gonna see if he’s got engine trouble or something? We gotta get back to the clubhouse, man. You forget how much cash we got riding on these bikes?”
Jack O’ Lantern signaled behind him for Legs and Tiny to get off their motorcycles. He glared at Slim Jim and grimaced through the rain. It was starting to come down even harder.
“You want to try and go round? I’m not mucking up my bike trying to go through that ditch. That truck can sink in it for all I care. Come on, let’s push it. I’ll grab the old man and make sure he don’t put up too much of a fuss.”
Jack O’ Lantern was soaked and exhausted, but he was always in the mood to bully someone, even if that someone was an old man stranded out on the road in the middle of the night. He waited until Slim Jim slid off his bike and then they spread out and started toward the truck in a staggered line. He was almost close enough to see the old man’s face peer out at him from under the hood when he heard the growl of an engine behind him. Jack whipped around and was immediately blinded by the high beams of an oncoming vehicle.
The truck screamed down the highway, racing full speed straight toward them, and only squealing to a halt at the last second. Before the vehicle could even come to a full standstill in the middle of the road, a barrel-chested man leaped from the passenger side with a .45 in his hand and a black ski mask over his face. Jack O’ Lantern immediately reached for the gun he always kept in the waistband of his jeans, underneath his cut, but he stopped short when he heard the old man behind him bark out an order to freeze. Jack O’ Lantern closed his eyes and clenched his jaw in anger, but slowly raised his hands above his shoulders. He knew it in an instant: they had been played.
Another man, skinnier and also wearing a ski mask, jumped down from the driver’s side of the truck with a 12 gauge and the two men stood side by side, silhouetted in the dazzling headlights. Jack O’ Lantern glanced over at his crew. None of them had managed to pull a weapon in time and they all stood as he was, hands in the air like a pack of school boys caught with their pants down. Jack waited to see which one of the three armed men was in charge. The driver of the truck now blocking in their motorcycles seemed to hang back slightly in the shadows and the heavier man was clearly the muscle. As Jack O’ Lantern figured, it was the man who had set them up in the first place who spoke.
“Get on the shoulder of the road.”
Jack O’ Lantern turned around slowly and faced the man whom he had mistaken for a stranded farmer. Now that the man’s head was out from underneath the hood of the truck, he could see that he was also wearing a ski mask and had a Magnum .357 pointed at Jack’s gut. Jack O’ Lantern blinked the water out of his eyes and tried to size up the situation. In the shadows, he could make out the man’s hands and saw that he was, in fact, dealing with someone older. He stayed where he was.
“You the deaf one now? I said to get on the shoulder of the road. Now move.”
Jack O’ Lantern knew that Slim Jim, Legs and Tiny were watching him to see how he was going to respond. He was used to bar fights and parking lot brawls. He’d had a gun shoved in his face at a stoplight a few times, but this was different. This had been planned, down to the timing and the exact location on the road. He realized that the men must have known what the Scorpions were transporting in the saddlebags of their bikes and how much was on the line, but he decided that there was no way he was going to part with a hundred and fifty thousand dollars without bloodshed. Especially when all he was facing was an old man and two idiots who probably hadn’t shot anything much bigger than a lame buck from a tree stand. Jack O’ Lantern was trying to think of the best way to catch them off guard when the man in front of him jerked his head slightly to the right. A second later, he heard the shot and Tiny went down, screaming and clutching his leg. The man’s eyes hadn’t left Jack’s face.
“Well, I guess that one can stay where he is. You three should probably do what I told you to do in the first place. Or we can shoot out everybody’s legs. Or brains. Hate to waste the ammo, bullets being so expensive these days, but it’s a sacrifice I think we can make.”
Jack O’ Lantern nodded slowly and backed toward the muddy shoulder of the road. Slim Jim and Legs lined up next to him, their faces pale, livid with anger at the situation. Slim Jim cut his eyes sideways at him, but Jack kept his eyes locked with the man who still stood in front of the farm truck. He could hear Tiny whimpering on the slick pavement. The man who had shot him came forward and pointed his .45 at Slim Jim. The skinnier man had lowered his shotgun and began snapping open each saddlebag hanging from the sides of the Harleys. Jack O’ Lantern had divided the money between the bikes in case one of them had wrecked or gotten pulled over. He was hoping that once the man took the cash from one of the motorcycles he would assume that it was the payload and leave the other bikes. No such luck. He checked each one and collected every last crumpled paper bag filled with hundred dollar bills. When he had completely cleaned them out, the man circled around the truck and jumped into the driver’s seat. Jack O’ Lantern exhaled.
“So you got the money. You gonna kill us or what?”
Slim Jim hissed next to him, but Jack O’ Lantern ignored him. He knew that if these men were planning on killing them they probably wouldn’t have worn masks. And they most likely would have done it already. The old man titled his head, questioning the other two masked men.
“Do you think we should?”
Jack O’ Lantern returned the man’s stare, but a strangling sound came from Tiny and he couldn’t help himself.
“No. Mister, no. You don’t gotta kill us. You don’t gotta do nothing. You can just let us go.”
Jack O’ Lantern cringed. If he’d had his gun out, he probably would have shot Tiny first and the man from the farm truck second. The man didn’t respond to Tiny, though, and climbed up into the passenger side of the truck. He shook his head as he pulled himself in and the man with the .45 got in behind him. The doors slammed shut and the truck backed up and then peeled out the way it had come. Legs rushed over to Tiny, still quivering with his blasted leg pulled up to his chest, and Slim Jim walked dejectedly over to his bike. Jack O’ Lantern couldn’t move. He let his gaze fall down to the wet, black asphalt at his feet and then finally shut his eyes against the rain. He had just lost the biggest score of his life in less than five minutes.
THE SOUND of the key scratching against the lock and the deadbolt clicking over caused Ramey’s eyes to snap open and her temples to pound. She slid her arm out from underneath the sheet and groped beneath the bed, trying to make as little noise and movement as possible. Her fingers connected with the cool, burnished metal and she slowly sat up, raising the Smith and Wesson 9mm in front of her. She had left the kitchen stove light on and by shifting her weight and leaning over to the right she had a clear view all the way through her narrow apartment to the front door. It swung open quietly and she heard a scuffling of boots on the rag doormat and then the man entering her apartment raised his head. Ramey exhaled as the fear fled from her body.
“Jesus Christ.”
Judah saw the light glinting off the gun and immediately put his hand out to calm her, as he would a dog barring its teeth.
“Whoa, whoa Ramey. It’s me. It’s Judah. It’s okay.”
Judah gently closed the door behind him and locked the deadbolt. When he turned back around he was relieved to see that Ramey had let the gun sink to her lap. She exhaled again and shook her head, her tousled hair framing her face. She put the gun back in its place beneath the bed and then slid down to the edge of the mattress, her feet dangling to the floor. Judah came into the bedroom and kneeled down in front of her. He rested his palms on her thighs and she ran her hand through his hair.
“You’re soaked.”
“It’s raining. Has been for a while.”
Judah raised his hand and cupped Ramey’s c
heek in his palm. She leaned into him and listened. Now that her heart was no longer racing, she could hear the steady drumming of raindrops against the metal air conditioning unit outside the bedroom window. It was a lulling sound, comforting and safe, and Ramey closed her eyes for a moment and heard only the rain, felt only Judah’s rough palm against the side of her face. A strange feeling of serenity crept over her. It was as if for one perfect moment, a frozen instant in time, everything was as it should be.
Judah pushed a lock of Ramey’s hair behind her ear and she opened her eyes to meet his. He was staring at her intently.
“I’ve just done something.”
Judah paused and looked past her, over her shoulder into the darkness of the room, and then began again.
“I’ve just done something that could change things for us.”
Ramey narrowed her eyes.
“Us?”
Judah met her eyes again. Ramey wasn’t sure exactly what was behind them, but she knew that she was witnessing a side of Judah that only she would ever know about.
“Us.”
Ramey bit her bottom lip and nodded once. She knew that she was on the edge of a cliff and that she was terrified. That below her was an ocean with drowning waves, and above her, a pitiless sky. But she knew, too, that if she let herself go, the wind just might carry her and she might even discover that she had wings not of lead, but of light. She nodded again and let herself fall.
“Want to tell me about it?”
Judah shook his head.
“Tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
Ramey reached out and began to unbutton Judah’s wet shirt. He stood up and shrugged out of it while she lay back down in the darkness. She felt the bed sink with his weight and then his arms wrapped around her, enveloping her, his body pressed against hers and his head in her hair. She listened to his breathing slow, and to the rain outside the window, and then she closed her eyes and slept.
FELTON HELD his hands in his lap and looked out into the empty parking lot. The rain was scuttling in brisk waves across the deserted expanse and the few street lights reflected down onto the sheet of water glazing the glistening asphalt. The K-Mart sign on the front of the building was lit, but the M blinked on and off with a staccato fury and Felton stared intently at the letter, focusing all of his attention on this blatant inadequacy affronting the otherwise harmonious night. The discord bothered him, but he couldn’t look away.
“And the Lord said unto him, Go through the midst of the city.”
The preacher’s voice crackled through the static, but Felton’s Buick radio only picked up a few AM stations. Tulah would be mad if she found out he was listening to a Baptist radio broadcast, but he couldn’t bear the silence. He wasn’t listening to the words anyway, just the lull and cadence that was so familiar to him.
“Through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and cry for all the abominations that are done in the midst thereof.”
Felton kept his eyes on the blinking letter, but reached across the dash and turned the radio volume down. He felt around in the center console for his cellphone. He kept his eyes on the K-Mart sign and redialed the number. No answer. Felton shifted in his seat and looked at the digital clock above the radio. The eerie green numbers glowed 12:43. He pursed his lips and dropped the phone back in the console and then rested his hands in his lap. He was starting to get nervous. Very nervous.
It had all started with the snake. It was an Eastern Indigo snake and Felton had glimpsed it a few times underneath the azalea bushes that ran alongside the church. Five days ago he had seen a flickering movement in the tall weeds beneath the bushes and had decided to go after it.
Felton loved reptiles. Turtles were his favorite, especially Red Bellies, but he appreciated snakes and lizards, too. He had collected and taken care of reptiles his entire life, ever since he had come home with a mangy gray kitten when he was seven years old. A family down the road had given it to him and he had brought it home in a brown paper grocery bag. When his aunt found out where he had gotten the wretched creature from she had smacked him across the face and forbidden him to ever again touch the filth handed out by sinners. She had made him promise not to speak to anyone who was not a member of the church and then she filled up the bathtub and made him put the kitten back in the paper bag. Her long, sharp nails had cut into Felton’s hands as she covered them with her own and forced him to hold the bag under the water. The tears had streamed down Felton’s face, but he hadn’t made a sound. His mother had died the month before and he was beginning to figure out what his new life was going to be like.
After the incident with the kitten, Felton had begun collecting reptiles. Tulah abhorred them and so as long as Felton kept them out of the house, the animals were safe. He trapped turtles in the drainage ditch and unearthed snakes beneath rocks and tree roots on the edge of the thirty acre property Sister Tulah’s house shared with the church. The Last Steps of Deliverance Church of God followed many of the signs laid out in the book of Mark, but Tulah refused to allow snake handling in her service. For this, Felton was grateful. He wanted to keep his animals to himself.
When he was a child, he had kept the snakes and lizards in wooden crates inside his lean-to clubhouse made from squares of plywood and a plastic tarp. He didn’t have to worry about anyone messing with them because he was the only member of the club. He kept the turtles in a rusted bucket outside of the lean-to and they were his favorite. He named each one after an angel from the Bible. They often died soon after he captured them and when they did, Felton buried them in a special cemetery he made on the bank of the ditch. Their deaths never affected him as the kitten’s had, but he felt a terrible ache of loneliness when he had to stare down into the empty tin pail.
Eventually, when Felton was in his twenties, he began to receive a stipend from Sister Tulah for running errands and cleaning the church and he was able to save up and buy a used camper from another church member. He set it up at the very edge of the property, far away and out of sight of the house he still shared with his aunt. He bought special terrariums and heat lamps and ran them from a generator. Inside the camper, every animal had a cage and every cage had a specific place on the long shelves he had built into the gutted space. He spoke to the reptiles while he fed them and told them about his day: who had been filled with the Holy Ghost and hit their head on a bench going down and what flavor of pudding he had eaten at Golden Corral. All of the turtles were still named after angels.
So when the black snake had crossed his path and slithered underneath the church, Felton had to go after it. The squat, narrow building was raised up on brick supports and there was a dark, cool crawlspace running all the way beneath the floor of the church. It wasn’t the first time that Felton had chased a snake through the crawlspace, so he didn’t hesitate. He pried away a loose piece of plastic siding and lay down on his belly to pull himself through.
Once he was through the hole, Felton had been able to raise himself up on all fours and crawl through the dirt in the dimly lit space. Streaks of light came through the cracks between the siding and the bricks, but mostly he made his way by feeling and sifting through the loose dirt and chunks of gravel and rock. Finally his hand brushed up against what he was looking for. There was a snake nest in the far corner and as his eyes adjusted to the dusky light he could see that there were at least three black snakes coiled inside the hollow. They slowly slid under and over one another and didn’t seem to be disturbed by Felton’s presence. He studied the snakes, trying to decide which one he wanted to take, when he heard the floorboards over his head creak and a slight dusting of dirt and grime fell through the cobwebs above his head and into his eyes. Felton froze.
“Huh. You better be certain it’s a sure thing. I know that we’ve done business before, Mr. Austin, and it was profitable for both of us, but that’s quite a lot of money you’re asking for.”
Felton had cocked his head and looked up a
t the rotting wood supports above his head. He couldn’t see anything through the boards, but he could hear the weight shifting over his head and he could hear Sister Tulah clearly. He had never been underneath the church when there was someone in it. He thought about the space in the siding he had crawled through and the direction he had gone in and realized that he must be directly underneath Tulah’s office in the back of the church. He was pretty sure she would have no way of knowing that she was standing right over him, but he held his breath anyway.
“Of course I can get you fifty thousand. Who do you think I am? I’ll have someone meet you in the same place as before. But this is not a long term investment, you understand?”
Even though it was cool underneath the church, the closeness of the air had caused Felton to sweat. He had wiped his forehead on the sleeve of his shirt, but didn’t dare turn around and leave. His head began to buzz as he became aware of what he was overhearing. This could be his chance.
“Let me just get it straight. You take my money down to Miami, buy your stuff, take it up to Georgia, sell it for triple what you paid for, and then bring me back seventy-five.”
Felton had heard a thud and a squeaking and knew that Tulah had just sat down in her office chair. From the sound, he could tell that she was swiveling in the chair as she listened to the other side of the conversation. One of the black snakes had left the nest and slithered over Felton’s hand on its way through the dirt. Felton had been too intent on what was happening above him to care about the snake.
“Just let me tell you something, Mr. Austin. So we’re clear. This deal of yours had better be, as you say, a sure thing, because I hope you have some idea of what would happen if it isn’t.”
Felton’s mind had been racing even as he kept his body stone still. Though he had never met him, he knew who Mr. Austin was. He knew many things about his aunt and her affairs, but only in bits and pieces. He had seen glimpses of bank statements, legal documents with large numbers and checks with strange signatures. He had once found a cereal box stuffed with rolls of hundred dollar bills and, on another occasion, a manila envelope filled with awkward and naked photographs of a county commissioner and a woman who most certainly wasn’t his wife. Mostly, he had overheard snippets of coded conversation before Tulah became aware of his presence and slammed a door in his face. This time was different.
