by Dale Bailey
Time.
Nick let go of the telescope, forcing himself to begin the descent. With his first tentative step his foot slipped. Already sliding, he grabbed for the wall. His fingers brushed the rough stone, and for a single fragmentary moment he managed to latch on to a projecting edge of mortised rock. Then gravity tore him away. He rolled into the slide, scrabbling frantically at the slope. His feet snagged on a shard of deadfall and he flipped onto his stomach. He caught a glimpse of scree showering down ahead of him, and then he slammed full tilt into a pine tree. Winded, he clutched the tree with raw hands and watched the miniature avalanche momentarily engulf Finney’s legs. When the dust settled, Nick’s heart still thundered in his ears. Only when it abated did he hear the roar of Evans’s laughter.
“Boy, you best get movin! You can bet the Pachyderm is chompin at the bit.”
The descent evened as he approached the shelf. Nick made his way carefully, zigzagging down the mountainside from boulder to tree. Beside an outcropping of pink granite, he stumbled over Finney’s Bass loafer. Bending to retrieve it, he caught full sight of Ransom.
The town gleamed in the pristine air, Lilliputian, one of those model towns in a toy store window, wreathed in dreams of a Christmas still to come. It seemed infinitely far away, a mirage, diaphanous as hope. Like he could walk a million miles and never reach it. And now it came to him, a truth he had not recognized before, not consciously, though it must have been there all along, from the moment he brought the poker whipping around into Pomeroy’s face, maybe from the moment he had crouched over the dead Aryan on that lonesome stretch of mountain highway: he could never go back. Not to Ransom, not to Glory.
He would have to make his own way in this world.
If he had the chance.
Once again, the certainty that he would not survive this overwhelmed him. Once again Sue’s face filled his mind—
—Hurry, Nicky—
—and the crash of fleeing time deafened him, seconds blurring past like a train, the 7:40 Express pushing hard outside the Glory yards. He picked up Finney’s loafer and trotted the last dozen yards to the group of round boulders. He paused, breathing hard as he stared at Finney’s shoeless foot, worrying the loafer in his hands, desperately not wanting to see his best friend’s face. Refusing to look back at Evans, ignoring the sound inside his head—
—click—
—Nick stepped around the boulders.
Finney looked surprisingly unhurt, peaceful, like a man caught napping. One shoulder looked twisted and a trickle of blood ran from the corner of his mouth, but otherwise he seemed unharmed. Like the Aryan: untraumatized but for the simple inconvenience of being dead. He had landed in a marshy patch of mud and sawgrass, his head and shoulders half sunk in malodorous muck. The smell reminded Nick of the ditch that separated the Fort from College Park, of the fish-stink that cloyed the Gulf air.
Wordlessly—all the pain of the past two days like a gaping hole in the middle of his chest—Nick picked up Finney’s shoeless foot—
—still warm—
—and wormed it back into the loafer.
The mud sucked at his sneakers as he hunkered down and took Finney by the ankles, trying not to look into his face. He backed away, lugging the body after him, but the swampy earth was reluctant to relinquish its prize. His grip slipped and Finney’s loafer—the same one Nick had just put back on him—popped off in his hand. Nick went down, sitting hard on a thin ridge of granite. Pain shocked up his spine, re-awakening that dull throb in his wounded balls.
Far above him, Evans laughed. “Tired, college boy?”
Nick said nothing. He stood without bothering to dust himself off, ignoring the pain.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered as he worked the loafer back over Finney’s foot. Nick thought he might break down when he touched the foot for the second time, but nothing happened. No tears came. Whatever place tears came from seemed to have dried up inside him.
Maybe he would never feel anything again.
And yet, still that desperation—
—time is everything, everything is time—
—pulsed through him.
He took Finney’s ankles again. “Sorry,” he said again, and this time instead of trying to drag the body, he gave it a hard jerk. The mud let go with a slurping sound, the sawgrass dancing as Nick stumbled back into the upgrade, dragging Finney with him.
“… ake it easy, college boy,” Finney Durant grunted, his voice so quiet that at first Nick thought it had happened inside his head.
“Finney?” he said, not believing, letting go of the legs and dropping beside Finney. “Finney?”
Finney slowly opened his eyes.
“Oh my God,” Nick cried, his breath leaving him. He lifted his friend’s head and cradled it in his lap. “I thought you were dead, man.”
Finney smiled thinly. “Not far from it I’m afraid.” His pupils were big as gunshot wounds, his breathing harsh.
“I’ll get help, I’ll climb back up, make Evans—” He glanced over his shoulder; Evans had disappeared from the wall. “Oh fuck, fuck, this is all my fault, we should’ve left the guy in the road, we should’ve kept going and never looked back.” And now tears did come. They were hot and shameful against his cheeks in the cold mountain air. “I’m sorry, I’m so goddamned sorry, I—”
“Nick.” Finney’s voice was surprisingly sharp. “Shut up.” He spoke in gasps, pushing the words out despite the pain. Nick started to say something, but Finney waved his hand weakly. “No one’s fault. We all agreed, even Tuck. Even Sue.” A fit of coughing seized him. He hacked and gasped for a long time before he fell limp. A pink froth coated his lips.
“Finney …”
Finney dropped his hand on the back of Nick’s.
“Sue,” Finney said.
Nick felt a dull surge of jealousy course through his veins, followed immediately by something worse, an acid wave of regret. Of guilt.
My fault, my fault—
“I’ve always envied what you’ve got with her … She’s one of a kind, Nicky.” Finney’s words were slow, strung together by sheer will. “I’m just sorry … just sorry …” He closed his eyes, coughed again, then said, “One of a kind.”
They sat still for a moment, Finney’s words floating between them. Nick wiped the blood and froth from Finney’s mouth with the tail of his shirt; he pushed a strand of Finney’s hair out of his face.
“Yeah,” Nick finally said, “one of a kind.”
Finney’s eyes opened again. He gripped Nick’s hand tightly.
“Nick,” he said, “I still, I mean I—” Another spasm of coughing rocked him. Nick slid an arm under his shoulders and gently raised him. Gradually, the coughing abated.
“Take it easy, Finney. Don’t say anything else.”
“Nick,” Finney said again, his voice weaker. “I still love her. Can’t help it, always have—” Finney fell back into Nick’s lap, spitting out a string of coughs. “I’m sorry, man, I just—”
Nick placed his hand over Finney’s mouth, quieting him. He wiped the blood away again. “It’s okay, I guess I’ve known all along.” He’d expected to feel rage, to be eaten with resentment, hatred. Instead, that place inside him, the small, black region where he’d harbored all his suspicions, shrank with Finney’s words; it didn’t disappear exactly, but it became smaller, lighter. Since he and Alex St. Johns had parted, Alex bound for the rigs, Nick for Ransom and a life he had hardly dared dream about, Finney had been his only true friend. Nick held Finney’s hand and said again, “It’s okay.”
Finney grunted and coughed again. Then he said, “Gotta save her, Nick … you … you’re the only one …”
Finney collapsed in Nick’s arms, breath hissing out of him. His legs drummed the ground feebly, as if an invisible assailant, death itself maybe, had come down to ravish him here beneath the mountain sky. Nick wrapped his arms around him, feeling the tremors course through his own body, irresistible. At last, Finney fel
l still, his eyes glazed, unseeing. Nick pressed an ear to his chest. Nothing. He pressed his cheek against Finney’s mouth. Still nothing.
“Oh Finney, please,” he begged. “Please.” But the boy in his arms did not move.
And then Evans was shouting again: “C’mon on, son, we ain’t got all day. Get im on up here now.”
Nick would’ve stayed there all day, for the rest of his life, holding the body of his friend, regretting all that he’d thought and said and done—but the trooper’s voice filled his mind with Sue, spurring time back into its frantic gallop. Once again he stowed it all away in the black recesses of his heart, blanking his mind of everything but the ordeal that lay ahead.
Nick bent into a weightlifter’s squat and shrugged Finney’s body onto his shoulders. His back and legs burned as he trudged carefully up the slope, placing each foot solidly before moving the next one. Finney’s weight bore into him unmercifully, his body heavier than the Aryan’s, much heavier than Pomeroy. Nick could have lugged Pomeroy around all day, stowed him in trunks, sunk him in quarries, bashed him across the head with a poker once again if he so much as dared lift an eyelid. But Finney was different, heavier, a weight not wholly physical. Gasping, Nick finally lowered him to the ground, the body slipping a little at the last moment, Finney’s head bouncing against the cold earth.
Nick sickened at the sight.
“I’m sorry.” He hunkered down to push the hair away from Finney’s forehead. Finney’s gray eyes stared blindly into the sky.
Looking down at him, what came back to Nick was the dead Aryan, the body shifting under his outstretched hand, the shock of that moment: not that the Aryan was dead, but that he didn’t look it, that the speeding Acura could have knocked the life clean out of his bones and yet left him so unchanged.
As with Finney: lifeless but looking so much not dead.
He gazed at the body for a moment longer, thinking: This is not Finney. Finney is gone. This is not Finney, this is only meat.
But another voice spoke up inside his head. My God, it asked, what have you become?
And yet there was not time to think of that. Not while Sue lived. Not while they still had a chance, however slim.
Time, he thought. Time.
He leaned over, his hands on his knees, breathing heavily. Waiting for his breath to slow, aware of every crashing second, Nick looked up to the wall. Evans had disappeared again—but Nick had no doubt that he waited somewhere up there.
Time to move.
He knew he could not lift the body again, so he grabbed Finney by the arms and began to drag him. Progress was slow. He moved again in a zigzag fashion, stepping carefully from rock to rock, from tree to tree. Finney’s head lolled sickeningly, looking as if it might roll loose from the shoulders and tumble down the mountainside. Nick tried not to look at him, concentrating instead on making his forsaken way up the slope. He no longer felt the cold. Sweat burned his eyes and plastered his shirt to his back. He did not stop, knowing that if he did, he would not be able to lift the body again.
At long, long last he reached the wall and collapsed against it, hugging Finney’s body to his chest.
After his breathing had slowed to normal, Nick poked his head over the wall—and felt his heart still. The first thing he saw was the revolving splash of the blue light clamped to the cruiser’s dash. Beyond Evans’s car, a puke-green Impala idled, its engine chuffing loudly, exhaust billowing from its tail pipe, the cruiser’s panic lights imprisoning it in a brilliant blue aura. Evans leaned into the driver’s window, speaking to a middle-aged couple. The woman held a huge map in front of her. She shook her head and laughed, the sound reaching Nick as though from across a great void.
Nick was on the verge of calling out when a vision froze the words in his throat, an image of Evans pulling his .45 and calmly blowing them away, first the man, then the woman. He saw their heads whip back, a bright, arterial spray fountain across the dash and windshield.
Despair filling his soul, he ducked behind the wall, cradling Finney’s body against him. When he looked again, Evans was waving the Impala back into the road. Half a minute later it was gone.
Holding Finney’s body around the chest, Nick stood—blood prickling through his cramped legs like an army of ants—and dragged it over the wall and across the parking lot; he passed Evans walking back toward him.
Smiling around his toothpick, Evans said, “Bout time you fellas showed up. I thought maybe you’d decided to have a picnic down yonder.” Evans leaned into the cruiser’s open door and killed the blues.
The trunk of the cruiser stood open, empty but for a spare tire, a jack, a roll of plastic.
“You unroll that plastic,” Evans said from the other end of the car. “Less you plan to scrub the trunk too.”
Nick lowered the body to the ground. He spread the plastic, then stooped to hook his hands beneath the arm pits. He had nearly succeeded in wrestling the body into the trunk when he caught a glint of Finney’s Rolex, strapped around his left wrist, beneath the cuff of his jacket. He crouched to get his knees under the body and heaved. It rolled into the trunk, and settled silently, the arms outstretched as if reaching for him.
He leaned into the trunk, fighting away the guilt—
—so you’re going to steal from him, too—
—as he fumbled at the body’s wrist.
“You bout done back there, college boy?”
“Just a minute.”
His fingers slipped, clumsy with exhaustion. With fear. Nick glanced around the edge of the trunk. Evans flipped his toothpick into the parking lot. In the same moment, the watch came loose. Nick backed away, his fingers trailing over Finney’s jacket, scraping against something stiff in the front pocket.
That moment in Pomeroy’s car washed over him, the glove compartment falling open under his restless fingers, the half-empty box of bullets inside. Give me those, Finney had said. Not so long ago, either, not even eight hours.
He slid the Rolex onto his own wrist, covering it with his jacket sleeve, and leaned back into the trunk. He worked his fingers quickly into Finney’s pocket. The box caught on the lip of the pocket. The top popped open, spilling bullets across the trunk.
“What’re you doin back there?”
The sound of boots on asphalt. And something else, metal scrapping leather: Evans had drawn his gun. Involuntarily, Nick’s shoulders tightened in anticipation of the bullet. But he did not look up—did not dare look up—as his fingers continued frenziedly gathering the spilled bullets, shoving them haphazardly into the cardboard box.
“What’re you doin?” Evans demanded from right behind him.
Nick spun, shoving the box into a jacket pocket. He looked up into Evans’s heavy face, looming over him like a full moon. Evans lifted the .45, wedging the barrel under Nick’s chin. An abrupt vision of death smote Nick, the Gulf rising remorselessly around him. He saw the table at the Smokin Mountain go clattering over, saw Tucker’s brains splashing across the back wall, Finney falling backward in an endless plunge, the mountain coming up hard to snap his body. He saw the gun kick in Evans’s hand, felt the white-hot bludgeon of the bullet.
He swallowed, and when he spoke he didn’t have to fake the fear in his voice. “The plastic,” he whispered. “Just making sure nothing would …” He dredged the word from the dry canal of his esophagus. “… leak.”
From the edge of the trunk, Nick spotted a stray bullet, half-hidden under the hem of Finney’s jacket. It took every ounce of his strength to tear his gaze away. Evans watched him, suspicion like stink coming off him. Nick couldn’t help it, his eyes flitted back to the trunk—and what he saw, or thought he saw, filled him with fear and joy: Finney’s hand twitched, then curled around the stray bullet in a loose fist.
Evans grunted and shoved Nick aside. He looked at the body for a long time, then stepped back and closed the trunk.
“Get in,” he said.
Had he seen it?
That was the question th
at kept coming back to Nick as they wound down the last twisting grades and into the valley below.
Had he really seen Finney’s hand close around that bullet? And if he had, what then? Was it some last fatal reflex, the muscles constricting with the onset of rigor mortis? Or did it mean something else altogether—that Finney was alive?
He didn’t know, couldn’t say. And still the seconds continued to crash down upon him, finally hammering the obvious truth into his stunned brain: It didn’t matter, not right now anyway. Finney—alive or dead—would have to wait.
Nick had no choice.
When Evans pulled up before Finney’s townhouse, College Park looked just the same, as if the world had not torn itself asunder in the space of a few hours, plunging Nick into a parallel universe where psycho state troopers stalked the mountain highways and men in bondage masks hacked apart teenage girls. Somewhere someone was buying coffee. People were sitting down to lunch. What had Gutman said? There are holes in the world, Mr. Laymon. People fall through them.
And so he had.
He felt as if he alone had stepped through a doorway between realities, over an unseen precipice that had plunged him into madness.
Even the Torkelsons’ place remained unchanged. Tire tracks matted Finney’s microscopic front yard as they had so many other mornings, ghostly reminders of the drunken visitors who dropped by down the street at all hours of the night. The gap in the shrubbery matched the clump of leaves and branches wedged under the fender of a beat-up Pinto three doors down, its front end jutting over the curb. Probably still passed out inside, whoever it was. He envisioned a Torkelson—the same one who had been pissing in the yard, maybe—wedging himself into the tiny front seat, off in quest of a pony keg or a dime bag of Jamaican Red. A sense of the life he had lost pierced him: a life free of the imperative of time, where nobody lopped off your pinky if you got knee-walking drunk and blew off your morning classes.
Something thick lodged in his throat. Swallowing hard, he glanced down at the Rolex, reading the time—
—12:44—
—through his own rusty thumbprint. He licked his finger; without looking, he wiped the watch face clean, hating the feel of the stuff—
