by Bill Cameron
Big Ed didn’t feel particularly protective of Hiram as a human being, but he was disinclined to leave his income source in the care of a stranger, particularly not some outlaw Myra had scared up. He lifted the larynx to say as much, but Hiram cut him off with the wave of a hand.
“What’s your name, fella?”
“I go by George the Flea.”
“Who do you ride with?”
The biker looked down at his chest, and for a moment Big Ed thought he needed to check to make sure. But all he did was point with his chin at the crest patch on his battered leather vest. sub rosa motorcycle club. Red gothic lettering circled a rose growing from a tangle of barbed wire.
“Don’t the Free Souls run Portland?”
“They can think what they want, don’t make it so.”
That yanked a sharp laugh out of Hiram. “Good enough. How you feel about driving me? My associate here has an errand to run.”
“Ain’t leaving my bike anywhere near this rat hole.” He glanced around the lot, at the beater cars and broken glass.
“Fine, we’ll follow you, but we gotta be quick.” Hiram looked at Big Ed. “After we get to the doc’s, I’m keeping the Suburban.”
“You will not be able to drive.”
“I expect George here can find someone to drive me”— he tilted his head the Flea’s way — “since I got the cash.”
The Flea seemed to think for a moment, then offered another terse nod. “Sure.”
“What am I supposed to drive?”
“I don’t give a shit. But you get caught nicking a car, I don’t know you.”
“You do not know this insect either.”
He’d kept his voice low, speaking only to Hiram, but the Flea heard anyway. Leather-clad shoulders suddenly squared, hands balled into fists. “You wanna step out of the truck and repeat that, robot man?”
Fucking bikers, balls to the wall all the time. Big Ed fixed George the Flea with a cold glare and set the larynx in the center console, dropped his hands between his legs.
But Hiram stuck out both hands, one toward Big Ed and the other toward the Flea. “Boys, boys, we all got monster cocks, okay? No need to be whipping them out and scaring the women folk.” The Flea’s eyes bounced from Hiram to Big Ed, perhaps balancing the cash Hiram promised against the pleasure of cracking Big Ed’s skull. Big Ed had no plans to let it come to that. He brushed the floor mat with his fingertips, feeling for the Desert Eagle.
“Dickheads.” Quiet to this point, Myra drew hard on her cigarette and exhaled a brown fog. “Ain’t seen a pecker yet scared me none.”
The Flea’s mouth fell open and for a moment no one moved. Then Hiram busted out laughing and Big Ed found himself fighting back a smile of his own. The Flea shook his head and looked at Myra, then relaxed. “Tell you what, I’ll call a guy to come meet us here. That leg don’t look like it needs to be dripping all goddamn morning.” He pulled a cell phone out of his vest and dialed.
“Best damn idea I heard yet.” Hiram leaned back in his seat, let out a breath. Big Ed could see the pulse in Hiram’s temple. “Ed, whyn’t you take Myra’s car? The morning’s getting away from all of us.”
“Nobody’s driving my car.”
Hiram scowled. “I wasn’t asking your opinion, Myra. You know what needs to be done.”
Ed picked up the larynx. “Boss—”
“I ain’t asking you either.” Hiram’s gaze was hard, half with threat, half with the pain he must be feeling. “Grab the bag for the kid out of the back.”
Big Ed nodded and looked away. “Okay, boss.” He was thinking about how Hiram had no reason to trust some goddamn outlaw biker, no matter that they’d shared a laugh. But he also knew Hiram couldn’t be deflected once he fixed on a decision. Big Ed could do little more than wear his misgivings on his face as George the Flea rode out ahead of the Suburban, some nameless outlaw the Flea scared up behind the wheel, taking Hiram who the hell knew where. Hiram returned his gaze, way too comfortable for a man with a hole in his leg. But all he could do was set his mind to finding the boy as quickly as possible. Sooner he got their leverage back, the sooner he could get Hiram out of the hands of outlaws and they could beat feet back to Givern Valley.
Three Years, Four Months Before
Somewhere Beyond Corn
The leaves of Stuart’s field corn hung limp from the stalks, battered by the late summer thunderstorm. Ellie felt the sharp-edged leaves drag at her shirt and rake the bare skin of her arms. She didn’t slow down. The rain had already soaked her to the skin. The hard drops striking her head and neck hardly registered. Somewhere off to her left beams of light bounded and flashed as Hiram Spaneker’s Suburban hurtled down the track that separated the corn from the barley. The track bottomed out at creek’s edge and, aside from the railroad bridge a quarter mile downstream, there was nowhere to cross for miles in either direction. The stretch of Little Liver Creek along the farm’s western edge presented a difficult crossing in daylight in any but the driest years, and it had been running swift and foam-blue this summer after a deep winter snowpack and late spring. Ellie’s only hope was the bridge.
But Hiram and his man would head for the bridge too once they reached the stream, unless they pinned her down in the corn first. If they reached the creek ahead of her, they’d have no difficulty driving her away from the bridge. Then, even if they couldn’t flush her from the corn, Hiram would have time to call in more men. Her only choice would be to move back toward the house. But that way offered only a bottleneck and they knew it. The rocky hills rose too steeply north of the farm for her to climb in the dark and the rain, and were too exposed to the south. Sooner or later they’d find her.
But on the far side of the creek, the county road into Westbank crossed the Southern-Pacific tracks and then curled away toward town. Westbank itself would be risky, assuming she could get that far, but the county road was dotted with farmhouses. She’d find someone to hide her from Hiram Spaneker. Down inside, she knew she couldn’t escape the consequences of Stuart and the scissors, not for long. But there were consequences, and there was Spaneker justice. The local Klamath County deputies and the town cops belonged to Hiram.
Her breath caught in her throat, but she refused to slow down. The tilled earth drank in the rain as fast as it fell and congealed under her feet as sticky mud. It was easiest to follow the plowed rows, but she knew her only hope of reaching the bridge before Hiram was to cut against the grain of Stuart’s furrows, to push not just downslope but downstream.
She heard a loud bang, almost a popping sound, as sharp as a shotgun blast. The headlights suddenly vanished. She hesitated, her feet sinking into mud. The rain poured from the sky like water through a hose and for a moment she lost all sense of direction. A voice shouted, but she couldn’t make out the words. Another voice answered and the headlights appeared again, now beaming at an angle into the dark sky. They’d got off the track somehow, back wheels in the ditch maybe, front wheels unable to grab the slick earth. The wind carried tones of accusation and defense. She fought the temptation to turn her back on her pursuers, to put distance between them and herself. That would only take her deeper into the corn. Instead she cast about, pushed down stalks, looked for a landmark, anything. But the darkness was too deep, the pouring rain too heavy. She rubbed the back of her hand across her face, smelled blood. Stuart’s blood, or her own—no way to tell. She pushed through another row, then another until she came to an oval clearing of stunted corn. The view opened up in front of her. She hesitated, muddy soil sucking at her feet. The sky above was a dark, roiling grey, but she could see a dull, mustard glow on the horizon, a thin sliver of the lingering sunset breaking under the storm clouds. The glow provided a bearing to follow. The creek was west. The bridge was west, somewhere beyond the corn.
Go.
One of the voices called out again, joined by a grinding sound. She crossed the clearing and pushed back through tall corn. In an instant she lost sight of the horizon, bu
t knew if she continued through the rows she’d reach the creek. Arms swinging ahead of her, she lifted one heavy leg then the other, again and again and again. At some point she noticed one foot felt colder than the other, realized she’d lost a shoe. It didn’t matter. She kept moving, stumbling, a thousand green blades hacking at her, raking her face and arms. She tasted blood now. Then her other shoe caught in a tangle of roots and she sprawled face forward. Liquid mud filled her mouth and nose, her eyes. She tried to push herself up, but her hands skidded across the muck and she fell again. Momentum carried her forward, sliding, slipping, falling through slime and roots and the broken corn stalks. The rain swallowed her cries. Then the corn ended and for an instant it seemed as if the earth itself vanished. She felt herself floating in a dark space made of falling rain and noise. Her head struck something hard and all around her the rain shattered, a thousand shards of flashing glass. She came to rest abruptly on her back, legs twisted beneath her. Above, through the scintillations inside her eyeballs, she saw the storm clouds falling toward her from the bottom of a deep, black well.
A heavy weight seemed to press down on her chest, rain struck her face like needles. She tried to lift a hand, to flex a leg. Nothing. A cold shudder passed through her. Somewhere over her shoulder she heard the sound of rushing water, and a dense grassy aroma overwhelmed the smell of mud in her nose. She’d reached the creek.
Then she saw a flash of light, different from the splintered radiance inside her eyeballs. The Suburban. They’d gotten free of the ditch and reached the creek. The Suburban would come no further. A broken path followed the stream, twisted among boulders and hummocks of grass and sedge. A fisherman’s path, slow going on foot, risky for horses. Impossible for the truck. She still had time, but they’d be here soon. Too soon, maybe. She had to get to her feet, had to find the bridge.
A voice called out, harsh, close enough now that she understood broken words and phrases. “—ing bitch ... soaked through—” She tried to breathe again, tried to move. Her muscles refused to respond. She blinked against the stinging rain, then closed her eyes. An image of Stuart’s blind, staring face flashed in her mind, the scissors gleaming.
Lick it off—
“No!”
She twisted onto her side, teeth clenched against the pain in her ribs, and reached out, grasped a loop of tree root, maybe the fallen branch from one of the red alders that grew at creek’s edge. She pulled herself onto her hands and knees. Lifted her head, looked out across the stream. The water rolled by, silver and shouting beneath the clouds. The flood moved so fast she couldn’t see the rain striking the surface, just the swift, bucking foam. Behind her, the voice shouted again. She dragged her feet beneath her, tested her weight. Shaky, uncertain. But she found her footing. Her legs held.
“—can’t be too far—”
She ran.
She couldn’t feel her feet. Her only thought was to reach the bridge, to get across and find the road. Find safety. Yet even as she stumbled down the path, lungs burning and legs heavy as stones, she knew that hope was remote. Across the bridge she’d find the same wet darkness, the houses that might offer sanctuary scattered and distant. Maybe she’d reach help, or maybe Hiram would find her.
Lightning flashed ahead, the sharp flare silhouetting the looming railroad bridge. Close now. Stuart often came down to the bridge to cast for trout in the deep eddies the spring flow gouged under the piers. At other times, she would ride her horse along the railroad tracks and stop at the bridge to rest and watch the water flow underneath. She liked to sit at the end of one of the deck timbers, chin resting on her arms folded across the lower rail, feet dangling in the open air. A safe place, a comfortable place. Now, as she pushed up through the tall grass on the shore, the long support beams below the deck seemed too flimsy, too widely spaced, the steel trusses brittle and forbidding. But more dangerous still were the voices behind her.
“—think I hear—”
“—keep moving ... see the bridge—”
She climbed the railroad embankment, dimly aware as the sharp gravel of the footing cut into her numb feet. She was glad for the darkness and rain, which would hide her bloody tracks, which might enable her to get across the creek unrevealed. But when she stepped onto the deck her foot slid and she caught herself. The rain pooled on the creosote-treated wood to produce a surface as slick as ice. She grasped the metal rail and took another step. She could see her feet, pale against the dark wood. The deck timbers, oversized railroad ties, were spaced too close together for a full step, too far apart to allow her to move at more than a slow, mincing pace. As she eased forward, the gravel embankment dropped away and she found herself over the creek itself. She kept both hands on the rail. Her feet throbbed against the wood, step by step.
“Don’t be stupid there, girl. This is no night to be playing on this damn bridge.”
She froze and looked back. He stood at the end of the bridge, a long, heavy flashlight in his hand. His man waited in shadow behind him on the gravel embankment. Hiram turned and handed off the flashlight, then stepped onto the bridge, moved toward her with slow, careful steps, hand on the rail.
“I know you’re scared, Lizzie, but I want you to come back with me. Everything’s gonna be all right.”
“I’m not stupid.” She took another step, then another.
“I don’t know what you think’s going on here, girl.” He matched her, step for step, his free hand reaching toward her, palm up. “I just want to get you safe off this bridge and out of this weather. Then we can sort things out.”
“I’ve done all my sorting.”
She heard him laugh, a guttural chuckle with no humor in it, little louder than the sound of the rushing creek below. “That I guess you did.”
“He deserved it! I don’t care what you think, he deserved it.”
“Let’s not talk about this here.”
Step. “I’m not sorry.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
She wouldn’t go back with him. Whatever happened to her, it wouldn’t be at Hiram Spaneker’s hands. She turned, hopped across two ties and slipped, caught herself on the railing. Her feet hung between the ties. Below, the water churned and leapt between the two bridge piers. She wrapped her arms around the rail and lifted first one foot, then the other, back onto timber.
“Lizzie, stop being crazy. Come on, let’s go deal with this.”
She couldn’t see his eyes, but she didn’t need to see his eyes to guess the thoughts behind them. She shook her head, took another step. The railing pressed into her damaged ribs.
“Nothing’s so bad it can’t be fixed.”
A dead Spaneker can’t be fixed. She felt behind her, grasped the railing with both hands. There was no running now. The bridge was too slick, the gaps between the timbers just enough to snap her leg if she made a single misstep. But Hiram faced the same problem. If she could get across, she might lose herself in the fields across the county road. She turned her back on Hiram and managed a couple of lunging steps.
And stopped.
A new face appeared out of the darkness, a figure crossing from the far side of the creek. Tall and broad, dressed in dark clothes, flashlight spraying back and forth across the bridge. The only clear detail she could make out was the John Deere cap. She sagged against the rail. Hiram had made a call, gotten someone else out there after all. The far side of the bridge might be crawling with his men. No sanctuary, nowhere to hide. She turned back to see Hiram within a dozen paces, hand still extended.
“Come on, damn it! I ain’t jacking off here.”
“I won’t go back with you.”
He grimaced, close enough to reveal the tobacco stains on his teeth when the beam of the flashlight from behind splashed across his face. “Keep that damned thing out of my eyes, you stupid son of a bitch.”
Ellie looked back. The John Deere cap was closing in. As it drew nearer, the features below the bill resolved, shadowed eyes and grinning mouth. He took another
step, and another, and then she knew who it was. Quentin Quinn, Stuart’s once upon a time nemesis, a boy with nothing but contempt for the Spanekers, now a Spaneker man.
She threw her leg over the rail, let her body trail it over.
“Holy Christ!” She couldn’t tell if it was Hiram or Quentin who’d shouted. She didn’t care. She wasn’t going back with them. She’d rather die than face whatever Hiram had planned for her, give herself up to the water below, slide into the dark emptiness of the racing creek. The water would be cold and swift. She wouldn’t feel it, just sink into the deep, rolling flow and lose herself. Safer than any county road farmhouse. No need for scissors ever again.
“Stop this, Lizzie.”
She allowed her legs to drop, hung from the wet steel rail by her hands. The rain battered her. Her strength seemed to drain from her hands with the rain into the stream below.
“Get me some rope or something.” She knew Hiram wouldn’t want to let her go, wouldn’t want to lose his chance to make her pay for what she did to his son. “We can work this out, you goddamn idiot.”
She smiled. She no longer felt any fear. Hiram Spaneker’s face appeared over the edge of the bridge, his eyes screwed up and dark. He reached out. “Take my hand, you stupid bitch. Just take it.”
She turned her head. She wanted to see the creek below her, wanted to watch it rise up to her as she fell. But she could only hear the water, a great rushing sound as soft as down. Somewhere far off to the west she saw the last glimmer of sunset, and above her the brown egg that was Hiram’s head.
“Take my hand, goddammit!”
She let go.
November 19 — 8:30 am
Follow the Babysitter
Myra’s car was a beat-to-fuck Eldorado built before Big Ed grew his first pube. The interior reeked of cigarettes. The radio was AM/FM-only, with twist knobs for Christ’s sake. Myra carped about his driving, but Ed had no intention of sitting in the passenger seat while a keyed-up tweaker navigated Portland streets. Even if she managed to keep the car between the lines, any cop worth his salt would pull her over at a glance. He didn’t need that shit.
