A sure sign that he was more present in this world than he had been earlier was his increasing awareness of the condition of his feet. He could tell that the heels of both feet and the tops of several toes were raw and skinless. They burned constantly. The bottom of his feet ached. His feet were now more accustomed to the advances in modern shoe technology that had taken place in the decades since the boots on his feet were made.
He stopped at one point, leaning against a fencepost to see if he could push the dizziness away. The day was hot and the road radiated the heat back at him. He kept his eyes on the ground, breathing deeply and wishing for a cold glass of water. When he raised his eyes, a man near his age stood in the yard of a nearby house, a shotgun levelled at him.
Buddy met the man’s eye. “I’m just clearing my head. I ain’t walked like this in years.”
The man used the barrel of the shotgun to gesture down the road, as if the movement might sweep Buddy from where he stood and push him from this place where he was not wanted.
“Clear it somewhere else,” the man said.
“I’m on my way home,” Buddy told him. “I live in this valley.”
The man took in Buddy’s appearance. “Well, you don’t live here,” the man said. “I don’t recognize you, so keep moving.”
Buddy thought of the .45 beneath his fatigue jacket. I have killed two men today and I would have no trouble killing you, he thought. But that was not true. This man had done nothing to him. Killing him would be wrong. Even killers could have morality. Buddy had learned that from the example his own father set for him.
He straightened up and wiped his hands on his pants legs. His body had become stiffer in the moments of inactivity, his age settling into his bones and muscles. It took more of a push these days to get him going. When he got home, he imagined that he might lay in his porch swing and sleep there for an entire day. Maybe even two. He moved on, the shotgun man continuing to bear him in his sights until he disappeared from view.
For the next mile, he saw no one. Then his ears perked up at the throaty roar of what sounded like exhaust pipes. He’d not seen a moving car all day and he stepped to the shoulder of the road, turning stiffly to look behind him. The move made him lightheaded. The car was loud, not yet visible, and clearly getting closer to him if the V-8 roar was any indication.
In a moment, the heat mirage merged with the oncoming grille of a vehicle. Buddy recognized it as a Plymouth of some sort. The car was hauling ass with no concern for the preservation of fuel. Though surely the driver had to see him, there was no falter of his speed, no decrease in the throttle. On a whim, Buddy stuck out his thumb.
The gesture carried some weight for the driver of the vehicle. The car was nearly upon him when the driver locked up the brakes. In the days before anti-lock brakes, brakes locked when you wanted them to, and that’s exactly what happened. The tires squealed and left black trails behind them, the car skidding diagonally in the road, stopping near where Buddy stood. The passenger window was down.
Buddy stooped over, resting his hands on his knees, and saw a man in jeans, a white collarless shirt, a black vest with a pocket watch, and a fedora sitting behind the wheel. It seemed an unusual outfit, of an old style no longer worn. Then Buddy looked down at his own Vietnam fatigues and knew that he was not in a place to judge another man for his fashion choices. They stared at each other.
“What car is this?” Buddy asked.
“It would be a 1973 Plymouth Scamp,” the driver replied.
The back glass was shot out and several bullet holes pierced the mustard yellow body panels. “Rough day?”
The driver shrugged. “In a manner of speaking.”
“Could a feller catch a ride?”
“Might could,” the driver said. He pulled back his vest to reveal a nickel-plated revolver tucked in his waistband. “But the feller better understand he ain’t taking this car without a fight.”
Buddy drew open his fatigue jacket and revealed his .45 in its shoulder holster. “The feller understands and agrees to keep his pecker in his pants.”
The driver smiled. “Get in.”
Buddy opened the door and settled into the passenger seat. He sighed. The smell of the vintage car brought back memories of when he’d first returned from Vietnam. In the jungle, he’d forgotten the smell of cars.
“My name is Buddy,” he said. “Who do I have the pleasure of riding with?”
“Lloyd,” the driver said. “My name is Lloyd.”
*
They barreled through the valley at speeds Buddy had not seen on these types of roads in decades. Lloyd squealed around turns without regard for any creature of God. Had they encountered a man on horseback or bicycle, a stray cow, or just someone walking the road, they would have died a quick and merciful death.
“What brings you to the neighborhood?” Buddy asked. “I see your windshield sticker says you’re from Wythe County, assuming this is your car, which would be none of my business.”
“It’s my car, alright,” Lloyd replied. “I’m here to check on my parents and to visit a friend.”
“They live in the valley?”
“They do,” Lloyd said. “I grew up here and my parents still live here. My friend lives on the far end of the valley.”
“I live on the far end of the valley too,” Buddy said. “Maybe I know him.”
They came around a turn and Lloyd whipped the wheel hard, the vehicle slewing sideways and nearly taking out a row of mailboxes. The vehicle jolted onto a dirt driveway, narrowly missing a deep culvert. Buddy held on to the dashboard with both hands, but was still slung up against the door.
“What brings you to this end of the valley?” Lloyd asked.
“I had to kill a man this morning,” Buddy replied without hesitation. “Then my truck was stolen.”
Lloyd considered this. “He need killing?”
Buddy nodded. “Most assuredly.”
“You use that .45?” Lloyd asked.
“No,” Buddy admitted. “I burned him alive.”
Lloyd nodded distractedly, his attention drawn to the small brick house that came into view. He slowed, then hit the brakes and slid to a stop in the driveway.
Buddy noticed that the man expertly avoided hitting the other cars in the narrow driveway.
“Looks like you’ve parked here before,” he commented.
“All my life,” Lloyd said. He opened his door and looked at Buddy. “I have to go inside. If I leave you here, you promise not to steal my car?”
Buddy nodded. “I promise.”
“I’d not take just anyone’s word on something like that,” Lloyd said. “But you’ve already told me that you killed a man this morning and how you killed him. You’re obviously not prone to lying.”
“I actually killed two men today, but one was of no consequence so I failed to mention him. I won’t steal your car,” Buddy said. “Although I might just close my eyes for a bit. I’m wore out.”
Lloyd climbed out of the car and walked across the yard to the back door. He reached onto the top of the porch light for the spare key and used that to let himself in.
Buddy eased himself back in the seat and closed his eyes.
He wasn’t sure how long he was out before he felt a nudge at his elbow. He cracked an eyelid and saw Lloyd standing outside his window.
“I need a hand,” Lloyd said. “I hate to ask, but do you mind helping me?”
“Of course not,” Buddy said. He moved to get out, finding that his body had stiffened while he’d been asleep. Pain shot up his feet and legs when he put weight on them.
Lloyd made an odd sound that may have been a sob and Buddy thought he looked pretty rough. “Everything okay?” he asked.
Lloyd shook his head. “They’re dead.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Lloyd,” Buddy said. “What happened?”
“I’m not really sure. Best I can tell, Mom accidentally cut herself in the kitchen. She’s on blood thinners. It loo
ks like they couldn’t stop the bleeding. There’s a trail from the kitchen to the bedroom. That’s where I found her.”
“What about your dad?”
“He couldn’t live without Mom,” Lloyd said. “Shot himself in the bed beside her.”
“What do you need me to do?” Buddy asked.
“I’d like to bury them.”
*
Several hours had passed before Buddy and Lloyd threw down their shovels beside the filled graves.
“You going to make a marker?” Buddy asked.
“No, I don’t think so,” Lloyd said. “If things ever get back to normal, I’ll have to sell this house. It will never sell if folks know there are two graves in the backyard. Such things used to be common, but folks these days are weird about it.”
Buddy nodded but didn’t remark on this. It was a very practical and logical consideration in his mind.
“I would like to get a few things from the house,” Lloyd said. “In case it gets broken into.”
“I don’t mind helping,” Buddy offered. “I got nowhere else to be.”
“I’d appreciate that.”
“Make sure you check for any food,” Buddy said. “I think it’s getting in short supply. You may need everything they’ve got.”
Over the course of another hour, they removed all the guns and ammunition from the house, what food they could find, and several boxes of keepsakes that Lloyd wanted to take with him. It looked like family photos and some other mementos. Several boxes contained Mason jars of various colored liquids.
“That moonshine?” Buddy asked.
Lloyd nodded. “The last of what my grandfather made in his lifetime. My dad never drank it so it just sat in the basement collecting dust. He wouldn’t drink it and he wouldn’t give it away. Just held onto it for sentimental reasons.”
“That why you’re taking it?” Buddy asked. “Sentimental reasons?”
“Hell no,” Lloyd said. “I’m going to crack open a jar as soon as the last box is in that car.”
Buddy smiled. He liked this guy. “What did you do for a living?” Buddy asked. “Before things went to shit.”
“I was a barber and a musician,” Lloyd replied.
Buddy nodded. “Suits you.”
Lloyd locked up his childhood home and pocketed the key. He went to the open trunk and stood looking into it while Buddy folded his stiff frame into the car.
“I’ve got blackberry, peach, and plain old clear,” Lloyd called. “Do you have a preference?”
Buddy considered this. “I’ve always been partial to blackberry.”
“Blackberry it is,” Lloyd said, shutting the trunk and taking the driver’s seat with a jar in hand.
He stared out at the fresh graves while he unscrewed the ring and popped the lid with his fingernail. He held his nose over the jar and inhaled. With the smell of that liquor came a flood of memories. Lloyd recalled his grandparents and the thousands of stories they’d shared over the years. He had loved them. He thought of his parents and their life together in this house. He thought of his childhood and how quickly it had all passed to bring him to this point. It was as if this jar held the distillation of an entire lineage. Not just his lifetime, but several lifetimes.
Lloyd brought his lips to the edge and drank deeply. Much in the way that Buddy had brought resolution to a chapter of his life by killing a man that morning, Lloyd also turned the page to a new chapter of his own life by opening a jar that his father had held for most of his life but refused to drink.
“Whereabouts does your friend live exactly?” Buddy asked.
Lloyd finished his drink and passed the jar to Buddy. “About a mile and a half past that little white church. Fellow named Jim Powell. Been a friend of mine all my life.”
“Then we’re going to the same neighborhood,” Buddy said. “I know Jim. We probably live within a mile or less of each other.”
“Best have you a drink of that before I pull out,” Lloyd said. “My driving don’t mix with drinking. You’ll spill it.”
Buddy took a sip. A smile spread across his lips. “Sweet nectar of the Gods,” he whispered. “That’s good shit. Takes me back.”
“Me too,” Lloyd said. “Me too.”
Chapter 10
Claypool Hill, VA
A weary Alice crouched behind a guardrail at the crowded intersection of Route 19 and Route 460. Since leaving Boyd’s, she’d walked forty miles in two exhausting days. Her feet throbbed with each step. They throbbed even worse when she stopped to rest and she could feel the blood pulsing in them as if they were about to explode. Over the last two hours, a sharp pain had emerged in the side of her knee and nearly took her breath at times, but she would not slow down. She limped on.
Her stomach did slow her down, though. Frequent intestinal cramps and diarrhea had plagued her for these two days. She knew it traced back to drinking ditch water. She tried to stay hydrated, but all food and liquid passed right through her. Though she was miserable, she had no time for it.
Her initial plan had been to walk out of the Bluefield area in the same manner as she entered it, keeping to the shoulder of the road, hiding when she approached other people, although she found that her experiences had changed her in ways she had not expected. That first night, she kept walking until she was out of the town of Bluefield and found a place to hole up on the side of the road. She awoke early and started walking immediately, eating on the road.
When she met her first group of travelers, she waited for the panic to well up within her and urge her into hiding. It never came. Instead, she drew her pistol and held it in her hand as she and the group passed each other. Whether it was the gun, her demeanor, or the look in her eyes she didn’t know, but the group did not speak to her. They looked at her, then averted their eyes, pausing all conversation until she passed.
Most did not even have weapons, or concealed them if they did. In more populated areas along the highway, where houses lined both sides of the road, some people had attempted to speak to her despite her icy demeanor. They appeared harmless, but she took no chances. She spoke to no one and carried her gun openly at all times now.
She had learned the value of casting a threatening presence into the world and making people shy from her path. She had a cousin, prone to violence and drunkenness, who had been such a man. Folks said of him that Heaven wouldn’t take him and the devil was too scared to let him into Hell. That was what Alice tried to be in her mind. A wraith so scarred and with a soul so blackened that a glimpse of her eyes froze the questions in the very mouth of the questioner and they let her pass without bother.
In a remote section near a golf course, a man on a motorized scooter offered her a ride. Had he not been drunk, he would have taken one look at her and kept moving, just as everyone else did. She considered his offer, as the ride would have knocked at least three hours’ walking from her trip, but she couldn’t make herself do it.
“Got this moped when I got my fourth DUI,” the man told her. “You don’t need a license and it gets fifty miles to a gallon. Who’s having the last laugh now?”
He sped off after she declined a second time with a pang of regret. What would she do if he sped off the highway toward some unknown destination? At forty-five miles per hour she couldn’t exactly jump off and she couldn’t kill him while he was driving or they’d wreck. She just couldn’t take the chance and put her fate in someone else’s hands. She could not end up caged in someone’s basement again, or worse.
She saw the roadblock at Claypool Hill from a good distance. She approached in cover and hid to observe it for a while. A few folks on bicycles and two men on horseback passed through the checkpoint. They weren’t delayed for long and there was no overt hostility from the men working the checkpoint. Even though it looked safe, she still opted to go around it.
She cut up into a subdivision of houses and gave the intersection a wide berth. Sticking to the paved road through the subdivision, she saw curtains move and fo
lks watching from dim interiors. A man with a shotgun stood by a barbecue grill, tending a small fire. As she watched, he slung a long-tailed carcass onto the grill. It could only have been a cat. It reminded her that she’d not eaten since midday, but it would have to wait. She would not stop this close to her destination.
The subdivision road crossed the highway that went into the town of Richlands. That was not the direction that Alice needed to go so she crossed the road and entered a cemetery. It was late and the sun was setting, but the cemetery was more peaceful than gloomy. It was one of the few places she’d been recently that seemed completely unthreatening, even though it was becoming overgrown without daily mowing and maintenance. It was almost like a park.
At one point, she came upon a fresh grave with a plywood marker. There were roses scattered across the heaped mound of dirt. The date on the board, written with a black marker, indicated a date of death somewhere around the start of this whole event. She was glad to know that some rituals were intact. Someone had cared enough to bury this person in a proper cemetery with a marker and flowers.
Perhaps there was hope for the world after all.
At the edge of the cemetery, she cut across a vacant lot then down a steep hill to a grassy embankment where she crouched and slid down to a ditch. She was back alongside the highway now, safely past the roadblock. Her office was just a couple of miles ahead of her. It felt like years since she’d left on that work trip and gone to Richmond. A lot had happened since then.
There was no way she’d make it to the office before dark, but there was also no way she was spending another night on the road. She had a flashlight and some spare batteries. She’d just have to be careful and stay on her guard. She adjusted her pack, tightened the belt, and started walking briskly, taking the longest strides she could. The pain in her knee nearly brought tears to her eyes and she tried to distract herself by remembering personal stories about the landmarks along the way.
She passed the bowling alley where she’d once had a birthday party for her son. When she and her husband first met, they went on several dates there. A few minutes later, she caught sight of a cinderblock video store where she’d once worked part-time renting VHS movies. She tried to recall some of the movies that had been new releases when she’d worked there, and couldn’t recall a single one. She did remember that the best part of the job was that she could take home a movie or two every night for free if she wanted. That was a big deal to her then. People always wanted to hang out at her apartment because of the free movies.
Legion of Despair: Book Three in The Borrowed World Series Page 13
