by Steph Post
“All right, fine. But if you’re coming back from Brunswick on Saturday night, then I want my money delivered Sunday. I’m holding a revival this weekend and it ends Sunday at noon. You will call me then and I’ll have someone come and pick it up. Do not contact me otherwise.”
Felton had waited, but there had been only silence and then the sound of Sister Tulah heaving herself up out of her chair and leaving the office. A slow grin had crept across Felton’s face and he had begun to formulate a plan.
Felton twisted the radio volume knob again. The preacher’s breathless voice had been replaced by a choir, their voices sounding as if calling up from the bottom of a well as they clapped and sang the chorus for “Give Me That Old Time Religion.” It was one of Felton’s favorites and he tapped his shoe against the worn floor mat of the Buick. He nodded his head along to the music for a few beats, but he couldn’t drive the growing anxiety from his mind. He looked down at his pudgy, pale hands and squeezed his eyes shut. He willed the cellphone in the console next to him to ring. There was only the sound of faraway clapping and voices lifted up to God. And the rain. Always the rain.
The doubt and shame began to creep over Felton like a sickness. He knew nothing of the man he had hired to rob Jack Austin and his motorcycle club, aside from the near infamous reputation that was whispered across Bradford County. To Felton, his plan had seemed so simple, so foolproof. So easy. Now he knew why. He had entered a world that he knew nothing about and Sherwood Cannon had seen him coming from a mile away.
The clock on the dash glowed 1:59 and blinked to 2:00 as Felton stared at it. He picked up the cellphone and dialed. Each ring seemed to stretch out longer and longer and Felton felt his eyes burn. He again focused on the winking neon letter in the K-Mart sign to keep the tears from spilling over the edges of his eyelids. He blinked and blinked to keep his weakness at bay. No answer. Felton gently set the cellphone down on the seat beside him and scanned the parking lot through the rain. It was empty. They were not coming. He had utterly and completely failed and he knew that there were going to be consequences. He put the Buick in gear and slowly crept across the glittering asphalt, into the night.
Judah shaded his eyes against the afternoon sun and watched the plume of dust trailing behind the silver Cutlass headed his way. Though the low lying field had been nearly flooded the night before by the downpour, the late morning sun was quickly burning away any moisture left clinging to the tall whips of cogon grass and the narrow dirt road skirting the edge of the field was already baking in the heat. Judah’s eyes followed the path of the Cutlass as it turned onto the track surrounding the field. It slowed into park a few yards from Judah’s Bronco and the purring engine was quickly silenced. The driver’s side door opened and Ramey stood up from the seat, flashing Judah a grin as she hooked her arms over the window frame.
“Thought I might find you here.”
Judah kicked one leg up behind him and leaned on the dusty back bumper of the Bronco. The edge of a smile crept across his lips.
“You’re good like that.”
Ramey slammed the car door behind her and walked over to lean next to Judah. He nudged her shoulder.
“You always were.”
“I brought you a cup of coffee from Buddy’s, but I’m pretty sure it’s gone cold by now.”
Judah glanced at Ramey. She was wearing sunglasses against the glare, but he could still see her eyes through the lenses. He looked back at the abandoned field in front of them.
“Thanks.”
They were at the edge of the same field, very nearly at the same spot they had been only two nights ago when Ramey had found him at The Ace. The field seemed smaller in the daylight, and the screaming cicadas buried underneath the unruly grass lent the atmosphere a wild air. Less majestic, but no less familiar. A kestrel swooped down out of the pine trees surrounding three sides of the field and crashed into the grass, sending up a spray of tiny winged creatures. The bird rose in discontent, its claws empty.
“You like working at your brother-in-law’s place?”
Judah turned to look at her. He loved the way the sunlight caught some of the red strands in her hair and made them glow. When she tilted her head a certain way, she almost had a halo about her face. He thought about reaching out and touching her hair, but didn’t. Ramey shrugged her shoulders.
“Not especially. If I have to hear one more time from some old geezer in a fishing hat about how I shoulda scrubbed the grill before making his daily grilled cheese, I swear, I’m gonna lose my mind.”
Ramey straightened up and pulled a pack of cigarettes from the back pocket of her jeans.
“But I started working there to pay back Aubrey and Cade for taking care of me when I got out of the hospital, after, you know…”
Ramey flicked her lighter and lit the cigarette clenched between her lips. Judah had noticed that she tensed in some way every time she mentioned the accident. Her shoulders rose up or her fingers curled or her chin jutted out as she tightened her jaw. They were small movements, but Judah understood what they were holding back.
“And then I guess I just got kinda stuck. Bills to pay and life to live and so on.”
She laughed bitterly and exhaled a stream of smoke as she leaned back against the Bronco. She was wearing a black tank top and her bare arm brushed against his. She braced herself against the bumper and he laid his hand over hers. It was warm. He looked down at their entwined hands as he spoke.
“What would you want to do?”
“You mean anything?”
“Sure. Let’s say you came home and checked that Powerball ticket on your refrigerator door and found out you’d won.”
Ramey took another drag on her cigarette and then passed it over to him with her free hand. He took it from her fingers without glancing up.
“How much?”
“Nothing crazy. Say, fifty grand. What would you do with fifty grand?”
Judah looked up at her out of the corner of his eye. She cocked her head to the side and considered his question.
“Quit working at Buddy’s, that’s for damn sure. Cade could hire a halfwit teenager to do what I do there. Don’t think it would put them out none.”
Judah nodded.
“What else?”
“I’d move out of that rat hole apartment I’ve been stuck in for the past two years. I hate living in town. Feels like I can’t breathe half the time. I’d get a mortgage on a house, nothing fancy, but with a front porch and a real yard. Maybe something out near Spinner Creek. You remember how we all used to drive out to the creek? And there was that stretch of road with the trees all hanging over with moss? Benji used to say it looked haunted? Something out there, maybe. Then I’d go back to work as a nurse like before. I really miss that, you know? And just build my life back up from there. I’d have a foundation to start over on.”
She kicked the heel of her boot in the dirt and turned to smile at him.
“Why, you got some premonition about the winning lottery numbers?”
Judah passed the cigarette back to Ramey and let go of her hand. He stood up and walked a few feet away, jamming both of his hands in his pockets and hunching up his shoulders.
“Ramey? Do you remember the time we lit that fire in the woods out back of your daddy’s place? When we were kids?”
They had been ten, maybe eleven. Judah couldn’t remember exactly and it didn’t matter. It was the night that mattered. In his mind, he knew every detail. The bright glow rising up from the center of the tin drum, reflecting up into the surrounding dark pines and onto the face of Ramey, next to him as always, her eyes fearful and wide. The sound of popping wood and the smell of burnt pine needles and the smear of brittle flakes of rust that broke off against Ramey’s bare arms when she reached down inside the barrel to light the fire. The heat from the flames, but also from the hot tears he could no longer fight back. And the gun, his father’s revolver, heavy in the limp hand dangling at his side.
“I remem
ber. That was the night your mama died.”
The night Judah’s mother had finally succumbed to the disease that had seized her body and destroyed her mind. The night his father had abandoned himself to the wild grief that had been eating him alive as he had helplessly watched Rebecca sink deeper and deeper into the arms of an enemy he couldn’t raise his fists to. The night Judah showed up at Ramey’s back door, bloody from Sherwood’s rage, terrified of the vastness of a world without his mother to protect him and filled with the bitter resolve to take matters into his own hands. She had opened the back screen door, raising her finger to her lips so that he would not wake her younger sister. Her own father Leroy was out searching for Sherwood, his best friend, after news of Rebecca’s death had spread. Ramey had been waiting for Judah, knowing he would need her and knowing that he would come, but she had not expected him to be covered in dried blood and carrying a pistol in one hand and a tube sock of bullets in the other.
She had taken the sock from him and together they had walked through the woods until they reached the clearing where they had dragged the barrel. They had been filling it for weeks with fallen tree branches and chunks of two-by-fours, planning on making a fire on Halloween night. Judah watched dumbly as Ramey disappeared into the pines and returned with an armload of what she called lightwood. Lightwood. Only Ramey would call it that. Only she listened to the stories of old women shelling peas on front porches and found their anachronistic vernacular poetic. Ramey lit the kindling and blew down into the barrel, sending sparks up into her face and hair. They stood in front of the fire together, still not having spoken about the death or the beating. Or the gun. Ramey had not tried to take it from him. Finally, Judah handed her the revolver.
“You gotta do it.”
Ramey took the pistol from him, holding it awkwardly out in front of her like a snake. She still had the sock full of bullets.
“No.”
Judah clenched his fists at his sides, his sinewy arms rigid and his narrow back ramrod straight. He wouldn’t look at her. He focused on the flames.
“You have to. We said we would. If it ever got so bad.”
Ramey’s voice was hollow.
“That was just talk. We didn’t mean it. You didn’t mean it for real.”
“Yes I did. My mama’s dead. My daddy’s got the devil inside him. He said so himself. He told me he’d kill me anyway if he ever had to look at me again.”
Judah looked at Ramey, his eyes flat and dark. The tears were gone, only empty resolve left in their place.
“You have to do it.”
Ramey began to cry.
“I can’t.”
He took the gun from her trembling hand and cracked open the chamber.
“It’s empty. You gotta load it. Get those bullets out.”
Ramey lifted the sock and emptied the slim bullets into the palm of her hand. Her eyes were shining as she looked down at the metal casings sparkling in the light of the fire.
“I can’t.”
Judah’s mouth was set into a grim line.
“Fine. I’ll do it.”
He had reached for the bullets, but Ramey closed her fist tightly around them. Judah dropped the gun to grab her wrist and pry her fingers open, but she wrenched free from him. She pulled her arm back and then hurled the handful of bullets as far as she could into the trees. Judah screamed and started to run into the woods, but Ramey tackled him. He was bigger than her, and stronger, but the fight had gone out of him when the bullets had disappeared into the darkness, and he had let her wrap her arms around him and drag him down to the ground. She held him while he sobbed and held him as he grieved and held him as he slipped into the twilight that follows childhood. She had held him until the fire burned low and the blue glow of approaching dawn began to tinge the sky above them and he felt that he could maybe handle being alive again. They had never spoken of that night.
“You saved my life at that fire.”
He turned around. She pushed her sunglasses up onto of her head and met his eyes.
“Maybe.”
They stood in silence for a moment, staring at one another. The air around them had turned serious, but finally Judah smiled. Ramey smiled back in relief.
“But what does that gotta do with fifty thousand dollars?”
“Nothing. Everything. I don’t know. But I told you last night that I could make things change for us and I meant it. We can get that house you’re talking about. We can build up a life. If that’s what you want, I want it, too.”
Ramey opened her eyes wide.
“That job last night? Are you serious? Fifty thousand?”
Judah nodded.
“What’d you think? You with me on this?”
Ramey stared at him for a moment longer and then squealed. She ran up to Judah and jumped on him, wrapping her legs around him. He staggered backwards, but caught himself and held her. She grasped his shoulders and leaned her forehead down so that it was touching his.
“I’m with you. But it ain’t cause of the money.”
Judah smiled and for the first moment in a long time felt like he was doing something right.
“No?”
Ramey sighed.
“No. I was with you all along.”
“How was the revival?”
Jack O’ Lantern’s face had carried the trace of a smirk as he had watched Sister Tulah enter the sanctuary through the back door by the stage, but as she came closer, her pale eyes locked on his, unwavering with every heavy step she took, the nonchalant sneer had fallen from his lips and he had become more and more uncomfortable. He had thought to catch her off guard and therefor begin with the upper hand, but his plan didn’t appear to be working. Tulah walked around the stage and stopped a few feet away from him, crossing her arms in front of her chest.
“What are you doing here, Mr. Austin?”
Jack O’ Lantern shifted his weight on the hard, backless bench. Tulah’s eyes scanned him up and down like he was a piece of meat being held up for her inspection in the deli section of the grocery store. She pursed her lips, waiting. Jack broke away from her gaze and looked around the church. He waved his hand at the crosses and hand-lettered signs painted with Bible verses and tried to keep his voice casual.
“You know, my great-aunt Mona, she was a real Bible thumper, too. Took me once to a camp meeting out on the Santa Fe River for she died. I remember they tried to baptize me or something in the water, but I couldn’t swim none and just about clawed out the preacher’s eyes trying not to drown. Never really went in for religion after that.”
Sister Tulah’s expression didn’t change. Her mouth was set in a firm line and her colorless eyes remained trained on Jack’s face. She didn’t blink.
“I don’t care about your great-aunt Mona. What are you doing here?”
Jack O’ Lantern stood up from the bench and walked to the far wall of the church, putting some distance between Sister Tulah and himself. When he turned back around to face her, he saw that she hadn’t moved. Jack sighed and tugged at the bottom of his leather vest.
“I need to talk to you about our arrangement.”
“You are supposed to be delivering the money this afternoon. What is there to talk about?”
Jack O’ Lantern turned and ran a finger down the church wall. It came away covered in a layer of grime. He wiped it off on his jeans, but kept his back to Tulah. He didn’t want to see her face.
“Yeah, well, that meeting ain’t exactly gonna happen.”
“Mr. Austin. I would advise you to turn around, stop stalling and tell me what you need to tell me so that you can get out of my church.”
Jack O’ Lantern turned around and coughed.
“We got robbed on the way back from Brunswick last night. Everything worked out like I said it would, we made the cash, made enough to give you exactly what I said we would, but we got setup. They were waiting for us, and knew we had the money. They took everything.”
Sister Tulah’s expression
didn’t change.
“So. What you are saying is that you don’t have my money.”
Jack O’ Lantern rubbed the back of his head violently. Her lack of response was exasperating and her composure made him nervous. Very nervous.
“I’m saying I don’t got your money right now. But I’ll get it for you. Whoever did this, it was an old guy and two others, they gotta be someone who knew. They were right there on the road, at the exact time we was coming through. It’s gotta be someone who knew about the deal.”
“I see.”
The inside of the church had become ridiculously hot. Jack O’ Lantern shrugged his shoulders and tugged at the leather sticking to his back.
“What I’m trying to tell you is that I’ll get you your money back. I’m gonna root out whoever robbed us and then I’m gonna ride around with his head on a pike.”
Sister Tulah’s eyes narrowed and she pursed her lips again.
“No. What you’re trying to tell me is that you don’t have my money.”
Jack O’ Lantern held his hands out in front of him. Sister Tulah hadn’t moved, but he felt like she was getting closer. Her eyes still hadn’t left his face and her presence seemed to be growing somehow, filling up the space between them. Jack O’ Lantern wished he had left the doors of the church open when he came in. He needed some air.
“I’m telling you that I don’t got your money right now. Just give me a little time. A week, even. And I’ll take care of it. I just need you to be patient.”
He suddenly realized that telling Sister Tulah to be patient was the wrong thing to say. On his ride up to the church, as he was going over in his head what he was going to say to her, Sister Tulah had not seemed such a formidable force. He had heard rumors, whisperings, of what happened to folks who stepped in the crosshairs of Sister Tulah’s wrath, but, after all, she was just a crazy old preacher lady, thumping her Bible and rolling in the aisles. Slim Jim had told him an unbelievable story about someone who had spoken out against her at town council meeting. Apparently he had woken up the next morning with a nest of rattlers at the foot of his bed. Like something out of a movie. Slim Jim had seemed pretty convinced the story was true, but he had never actually met Sister Tulah. Jack O’ Lantern was well aware of Sister Tulah’s malevolent and intimidating reputation, but in his mind she remained the fat woman he had met ten years before at a Klan cookout. She had certainly ruled the roost over her impotent husband and short bus nephew, but she wasn’t exactly what Jack O’ Lantern would have called a dangerous threat.
