Lightwood

by Steph Post

  “I don’t even want to know.”

  Slim Jim spat on the quartz and rubbed it with his thumb.

  “She ain’t a bad broad, Jack.”

  “On her knees, no.”

  “I’m serious.”

  Jack kicked a spray of gravel toward Slim Jim.

  “Great, then wife her up so she’ll shut up and stay home.”

  Slim Jim rocked back on his heels and stood up.

  “She bite your dick off or something? What you got against her now?”

  Jack O’ Lantern took a cigarette out of the pack in his back pocket and clenched it between his teeth while he waved the flame of his Zippo over it and inhaled deeply. He pointed a finger at Slim Jim and spoke around the cigarette.

  “Let me tell you something, Jimmy. She’s calling cause of that Cannon boy she helped you string up. Either one of two things is going through that bottle blond head of hers.”

  Jack took the cigarette from his mouth and rolled it between his thumb and forefinger.

  “Either she’s trying to hit me up for money to keep her trap shut, which ain’t gonna happen, or she’s started feeling bad about it and she wants someone to talk to. Which ain’t gonna happen, neither.”

  Slim Jim looked off into the woods beyond the fence.

  “I guess.”

  “See, the problem with a girl like Shelia is that she’s not dumb enough for her own good. She’s not smart enough to find something else to do that doesn’t involve hanging around a pack of dirty bikers to make a buck, but she’s not quite dumb enough to just take it lying down.”

  “Maybe she wants something better than what she’s got.”

  Jack O’ Lantern flicked his half-smoked cigarette onto the gravel.

  “Maybe you should take it to Oprah. Now, anything else? Anything important?”

  Slim Jim pocketed the quartz and turned back to Jack O’ Lantern.

  “Like I said, everything’s good. The boys are on their way back. I just talked to Legs and he cleared out the ammo at the Wal-Mart in Kentsville and the one over in Starke, too. Got a bunch of stuff we don’t need, but maybe that makes up for the fact that Tiny’s gonna show up with twelve cases of beer and a jar of pickles.”

  Jack O’ Lantern laughed.

  “I guess we can live on that.”

  He turned to walk back to the clubhouse, but Slim Jim cut him off. His face was grave.

  “We ain’t doing all this for the Cannons.”

  Jack cocked his head.

  “What’d you mean?”

  Slim Jim crossed his arms in front of his chest.

  “I mean, this whole batten down the hatches act ain’t cause you’re worried about Sherwood Cannon.”

  “All right.”

  “Maybe it’ll draw them out to attack us like you said, and we’ll get them and the money and we can all go on living the American dream. But I saw that snake last night, Jack. And I saw your face when you came back from that church on Sunday. This ain’t just about the Cannons. This is about that Bible thumping bitch. She’s got you scared so bad I bet you ain’t taken a shit in three days. What’d she say to you?”

  A tinge of heat rose to Jack O’ Lantern’s face, but he kept his mouth straight and stared back at Slim Jim with a level gaze.

  “If you needed to know, I woulda told you by now.”

  Jack pushed past Slim Jim and walked toward the front door of the clubhouse. Slim Jim waited a moment and then called after him.

  “Well, are you gonna wait to tell me once it’s too late?”

  Jack O’ Lantern kept walking.

  “Maybe.”

  RAMEY STILL hadn’t been happy about letting Judah go off into the woods by himself, but he had smacked his palm down on the top of the Cutlass twice and turned his back. He heard the tires of her car pull away from the sandy shoulder of the road and he knew that she was driving away, albeit slowly. He had promised to be back before nightfall. The late afternoon sunlight filtered down through the canopy of pine needles and oak leaves, but the twilight was long and languorous this time of year and he figured he had at least four good hours of light left in the day. Judah adjusted the rifle strapped over his back and headed west toward the Scorpions’ clubhouse. He had judged the distance at no more than three miles and if he kept up his pace through the twisting underbrush he figured he could be in a good surveillance position in under an hour.

  The going was slower than he had anticipated, though. He’d been living inside concrete walls for too long and had forgotten much of what had been second nature to him as a child growing up in the woods of Bradford County. He had forgotten which palmettos slid over clothing and which stuck their long points into a sweat soaked T-shirt and jabbed through the cotton. He had forgotten, too, that no matter the heat, a T-shirt was a poor choice for going deep into the woods. His arms and neck were benighted by long-legged mosquitos that left thick splats of blood on his skin when he was quick enough to smack them. Pestering gnats hovered around the crown of his head like a halo. There were a few early yellow flies out as well, leaving welts the size of dimes when they managed to alight on his slick skin. He careened through spider webs that left him searching his hair and shaking out his shirt and he flipped a thick black snake out of its hiding by accident. It slithered over his boot and disappeared as quickly as it had been seen. Birds, squirrels and who knows what else bolted through the tangled tree roots, waist-high bushes and clinging weeds and briars. It wasn’t nearly as easygoing as he had imagined and the rifle was giving him trouble as well.

  At first, when Hiram had offered Judah and Ramey a chance to pick over his stockpile of weapons, Judah had been cautious. Between the two of them, they had only the .45 Sherwood had given Judah and the 9mm Ramey always hid under her bed or carried in her purse. What he wanted was a rocket launcher, maybe a handful of grenades. What he had access to was two handguns. And not enough money to buy anything else. But he had followed Ramey’s lead and agreed to humor Hiram by looking at some weapons before leaving. They couldn’t very well have left on their own anyway; they needed Hiram to take them back through the minefield maze.

  Judah had expected Hiram to take them out back to a storage shed of military surplus weapons, but just as they were about to descend the trailer steps, Hiram ordered them back inside. Judah had eyed Ramey warily from the kitchen as Hiram began pushing his coffee table back against the wall and rolling up the fake Oriental rug underneath. Ramey had raised her eyebrows, but seemed unfazed by any of Hiram’s erratic behavior, so Judah had tried not to be alarmed. He was half expecting Hiram to trigger some switch that would blow them all to high heaven, when the old man pried up a piece of the floor and shoved his arm up to his shoulder down into the dark hole. The gun he finally latched onto and dragged out from underneath the trailer almost made Judah laugh. When Hiram sprang up and tossed it at Judah, he was so surprised he almost didn’t catch it.

  “No need to look at nothing else, brother. That there’s all you need.”

  Judah looked down with wide eyes at the M14 rifle in his hands.

  “What the hell is this? A gun from a civil war reenactment?”

  Hiram was busy moving the coffee table back into place and didn’t see the expression on Judah’s face.

  “Best gun in the world for what you’ll be needing it for. Accurate, never jams, standard military issue.”

  Judah turned the gun over in his hands and whispered to Ramey.

  “Issued before electricity was invented?”

  Ramey only smiled and shook her head.

  Hiram marched over to Judah and took the gun from him. He ejected the clip, blew on the magazine and slammed it back into the gun. He rubbed his fingers fondly down the length of the wooden stock in a way that made Judah uncomfortable. Hiram obviously loved the gun. He touched the barrel to his cheek for a moment and then thrust it back into Judah’s still outstretched hands.

  “Don’t even need to look at no others. That’s the one for you.”


  Judah protested.

  “I don’t mean to be rude, but I need something that can actually fire a bullet.”

  Hiram ignored Judah and walked past them through the tiny kitchen. He held the screen door open and motioned them out.

  “Best gun you’ll ever own there, brother. They used those back in Vietnam. Still use em over in Iraq and Afghanistan today. Sniper rifle. Don’t even need no scope cause those iron sights are dead on. Take it, it’s on me. I got five more under there. Though I guess I’ll have to move em now that you know about that particular hiding spot.”

  Hiram had been serious. Judah had looked to Ramey again, but she merely shrugged and had taken the gun off his hands. She had thanked Hiram and followed in his footsteps until they reached the safety of her car. Once out of the minefield, Judah had turned to Hiram to shake his hand, but the old man had quickly held his arms up, indicating that he didn’t touch people. Ramey was already in the driver’s seat, so Judah merely said thanks. Hiram had nodded, but had one request for Judah.

  “If you get a chance, blow the dick off that peckerwood Jack O’ Lantern. I don’t mean kill him or nothing, but since he ain’t got no balls in the first place, you might as well even him out.”

  Judah had said he would do his best.

  As yet another low lying branch got hung up on the tip of the gun’s barrel rising high over his shoulder, Judah was starting to regret bringing along the rifle more and more. Ramey had insisted that he take two guns with him, however, and he wasn’t going to saddle her with a relic that looked like it belonged in a museum of ancient history. He had come to realize that she didn’t like being without her 9mm, either.

  He had been too drunk the night before to be surprised when she pulled the gun out of her purse and aimed it at his father, but now that he was able to reflect back on it, it did seem like a pretty ballsy move. Had Ramey always been like that? As he stumbled over snapping pine boughs, wincing at the cracking sound echoing through the woods, he remembered another time she had threatened Sherwood. It had been not long after Judah’s mother had passed away and upon coming over to visit him Ramey had noticed yet another dark bruise running down the length of Judah’s face. She had spotted it from where she was still straddled across her bicycle in front of the Cannon’s house. Judah had been coming down the steps to meet her, making a wide circle around Sherwood, sitting on an overturned five gallon bucket on the porch, and knew the instant he saw the storm in her eyes that something bad was going to happen. He didn’t have time to stop her; he barely had time to duck. The chunk of cinderblock missed Sherwood’s face by only an inch. If he hadn’t turned his head to spit a drip of tobacco off the porch side she would have nailed him in the eye. And later that night Sherwood made Judah very cognizant of that fact. Judah never told Ramey of the repercussions of her act, though. Instead, he had always let it make him smile. So, yeah, maybe Ramey had always been like that. And it made Judah smile even more now.

  A motorcycle engine growled up ahead and Judah was startled from his reverie. He instinctively crouched down in the palmettos and held his breath. The engine continued to rumble, but now Judah could tell that it wasn’t as close as he first thought. He was definitely nearing the clubhouse, though, and began to take his steps cautiously. A few more yards and he was able to glimpse open space up ahead and a flash of metal beyond that. The engine sound cut off swiftly and the chattering noises of the woods crept back to his ears. Judah took a few more steps and looked around for a suitable tree to climb. He hauled himself up a sprawling live oak and found a half decent perch in between two branches. Judah unslung the rifle and bridged it between two smaller branches while he folded his legs underneath him. He brought the binoculars dangling around his neck up to his eyes and adjusted them until he could see more than only various shades of green. Judah settled himself and began to survey the clearing before him.

  Over the next hour, Judah watched the Scorpions move around the gravel lot surrounding their clubhouse. Every club member he saw was carrying and the two men at the metal chain link gate were brandishing AK-47s as they scanned the drive leading up to the clubhouse. Judah also noticed that the men seemed slightly awkward with the rifles as they tried to balance them on their shoulders or lean them against their legs to light a cigarette. He figured they weren’t as familiar with the rifles as he had previously assumed outlaw bikers to be. While he watched, though, two men replaced them at the gate and seemed to handle the guns with ease. It was hard to tell for sure, but one of the men on the second shift had the same stringy build as one of the bikers on the highway Saturday night. Judah realized that he was dealing with at least two different levels of competency.

  In addition to the skinny man who took over one of the posts at the gate, Judah recognized one of the club members who was fiddling with the engine of a motorcycle backed up against the side of the clubhouse. He was sitting on a cinderblock next to the bike with one leg stretched out stiffly in front of him and Judah was sure that this was the man Levi had shot. Finally, just as the light was beginning to slip from afternoon pewter to evening copper, and Judah was readying himself to climb down and head back, he saw the man he had been looking for. The bright orange hair was unmistakable. When Judah raised the binoculars to his eyes and caught the man’s face in his sights, he was sure. It was Jack O’ Lantern. Judah followed him through the lenses as he walked across the gravel lot toward the gate. Judah hadn’t thought much of him when he had been pointing his gun at the back of his head in the rain, but now he noted Jack O’ Lantern’s every movement. His shoulders were tense and his hands balled into fists, but almost unconsciously so, as if he wasn’t angry, but merely ready to spring. Nervous. Prone to making rash decisions and stupid mistakes. Or at least Judah hoped.

  Judah watched him walk to the fence and talk with the tall, skinny man. The skinny man kept pointing down the road and then back at the clubhouse while Jack O’ Lantern crossed his arms and shook his head. Judah thought they must be arguing. He continued watching until Jack O’ Lantern turned away and walked back to the clubhouse, hands deep in his pockets with his shoulders hunched up and his head downcast. It was a good sign. Judah slipped the rifle strap over his head and situated the gun between his shoulder blades before dropping down to the ground. As soon as he was sure that he was far enough away from the clubhouse, he pulled his cellphone out of his pocket and powered it back on. He ignored the three missed call alerts and dialed Ramey’s number in the darkening light.

  Judah’s cellphone vibrated on the kitchen table between them and Ramey glanced down and rolled her eyes. It continued to vibrate, edging closer to the open take-out containers in the middle of the table with every muted ring. Ramey reached for her beer.

  “You gotta answer it sometime.”

  Judah kept his eyes on the pulled pork sandwich he was eating. He didn’t look at Ramey and he didn’t look at the phone. Finally, it stopped buzzing. The silence grew loud and was broken only by the feathery crinkle of paper napkins and the jarring clink of beer bottles. Ramey picked up a piece of greasy garlic toast, but only tore it into pieces on the paper plate in front of her. She rubbed her fingers together and then wiped her hands on her jeans. She drew one leg up onto the chair she was sitting on and rested her chin on her knee.

  “So you think the Scorpions are setting a trap?”

  Judah popped the last bite of sandwich into his mouth and rifled through the plastic take-out bag for another napkin.

  “I don’t know for sure.”

  He pulled out the last napkin and mashed it between his fingers, trying to soak up some of the sauce. Judah wadded up it up and tossed it back in the bag before reaching for his Budweiser. He wrapped his hand around the bottle’s neck, but didn’t pick it up.

  “I think this guy, Jack O’ Lantern, he’s gotta know that we’re coming at them for Benji. And they want their money back. They didn’t go after Benji cause they thought he robbed them; they went after him to rile Sherwood up. They were trying
to rattle him so they could flush him out and find a way to get the cash back.”

  Ramey ran her nails up and down the length of her leg.

  “But that’s exactly what Sherwood’s not doing.”

  Judah raised his beer and took a swig.

  “I know.”

  “And exactly what you are.”

  He set the beer down and picked at the wet, peeling label.

  “Your point?”

  Ramey stretched her leg out and sat up straight.

  “My point is, if you go after them, you’re playing right into their hand. You’re doing exactly what they want you to do.”

  Judah still wouldn’t look at her.

  “Yeah.”

  Ramey spread her hands out on the table, palms down.

  “Sherwood may be a real dick, but he’s playing it smart.”

  “And I’m playing it stupid.”

  “That’s not what I said.”

  “No, that’s what I said.”

  Judah finally raised his eyes to Ramey. He reached out across the table and placed his hand over hers.

  “Look, Ramey. I know that the smart thing to do would be to act like Sherwood.”

  Ramey cocked her head to the side, but only listened.

  “Lay low, wait em out, whatever. If I gave a damn about the money, that is. But it ain’t about the money. It’s about what they did to this family. It’s about making sure that no one thinks they can mess with the Cannons. Ever.”

  Judah gripped Ramey’s hand, then released it and leaned back in his chair, his dark eyes boring a hole in the table before him.

  “So, it’s about pride?”

  Judah’s head snapped up and his eyes smoldered at Ramey.

  “It’s about justice. It’s about what Benji deserves. It’s about doing the right thing now. What I think is the right thing. You’re the one who said I needed to open my eyes. Think for myself. Well, this is what it looks like when I think for myself. It’s stupid and it don’t make no sense, but it’s all I got. Gut feelings, not brains. ”

  Ramey’s eyes were soft.

  “I’m not arguing. I said I was with you, and I’m with you.”