by Dale Bailey
But in that moment, before the cancer devoured her and Nick came to understand the fatal complexity of his father’s heart, Sharon Laymon had been magical. Playing Operation, she had instituted an impromptu rule that allowed Nick with his clumsy childhood fingers to have three turns for her every attempt. She had crowed with delight, clapping her hands, when he lifted the metal tweezers, the butterfly from the little man’s stomach clutched triumphantly between the pincers.
Smart kid like yourself ought to know some surgery, Pomeroy had said.
Turned out he was right. In the remembered presence of his mother, for Sue Thompson, Nick could do anything.
He slid the knife into the bullet hole in the blonde’s breast, and began to work the misshapen lump of lead into the light, focused on that stupid game, trying not to set the red nose to blinking.
At 1:23 he spilled the bullet into an open washcloth. Then he started on the trooper.
“Me and you,” Pomeroy said. “We’re gonna play a game. Twenty questions, right? Way it works, I ask you a question. You don’t answer up, I shoot you. Understand?”
Nick, bent over his work, nodded. “Yeah, I understand.”
And so Nick told him, the whole deranged sequence of events spilling out of him in response to Pomeroy’s grunted queries, Evans and Tucker and the Smokin Mountain, Gutman squatting like a loathsome toad behind his mahogany desk, Sue screaming and screaming when they took her finger, and Finney. Finney crumpled lifeless in the trunk.
When he finished, his hands were red almost to the elbow, and something had died inside him. Two more lumps of lead lay atop the washcloth. He closed the knife and handed it back to Pomeroy. He lifted the gory washcloth, folded it around the used bullets, handed that back, too.
Pomeroy slid the washcloth into a pocket of his jeans. “Now, get me the trooper’s keys, son.”
He leaned over, dug the keys from the uniform pants, and handed them back.
He glanced at the Rolex—
—1:49—
—and thought of Sue. Ten minutes.
And the thought sparked an image in his mind: Evans, grinning as he tucked the seeping pinky into his breast pocket.
An irrational hope leapt into his mind—
—they can save it, reattach it—
—but a deeper, despairing self knew the truth: that he only wanted it, a piece of Sue, a piece of the life he had lost. And more, that it would be base and disgraceful to leave it here in this abattoir, nestled close by the dead trooper’s heart. He moaned as he leaned into the tub, fumbling at Evans’s uniform blouse.
“What are you doin, son?” Pomeroy said.
And then he had it, the finger, slim and cold, the bone a blood-clotted knob at its base. Nick stood, brandishing it, barely able to recognize the washed-out specter in the mirror at Pomeroy’s back: a broad-shouldered kid with the desperate, blood-speckled face of a dying old man; his eyes wild and empty, dry wells on eternity; his hands and arms gore-slick and stinking as he thrust the finger out before him, token, talisman, and plea for mercy.
He stumbled to his knees before the man with the gun, holding the finger out before him, and watched with horrified eyes as the second hand on the bloody Rolex swung through its arc once more—
—click!—
—eating time.
“Please,” he whispered. “We can save her.”
Pomeroy’s voice was almost gentle. “Time to save anybody’s over, son. Cops be turnin up the heat real soon, and I’m overdue for a vacation somewhere sunny and far, far away from here. I got the tape, and I got you, and you happen to bear a passin resemblance to one of them fellas that cut up poor Casey Barrett. That ought to be good enough for her daddy. You and me, son, we’re goin for a ride.”
Tuesday, 1:57 to 2:59 PM
Nick filled his mind with waves, relentless gray swells, primordial and eternal, hurling themselves upon a broken shore. He imagined the chill water closing over his head, dragging him into the vast emptiness of the Gulf, an endless, rolling swell the dull, dead color of an elephant’s hide.
He thought of waves, the sound of them slipping into the crash of seconds hurtling past, time spinning beyond his grasp.
He thought of the gray endlessness of waves—so he would not have to see Finney lying sprawled and broken at the foot of a mountain; so he would not have to see the emptiness of Sue’s glazed eyes.
Pomeroy shoved Nick into the back seat of Evans’s car. The stale smell of vomit enveloped him. He doubled over, sliding from the seat into the floorboard, retching. But nothing came up. He had emptied himself hours ago. Now he was nothing but shell, an empty husk—
—a hollow man—
—ready to crumble into ash at a touch.
Gasping, Nick heaved himself onto the seat as Pomeroy dropped into the front, slamming the door loudly.
“Fuckin giant,” Pomeroy muttered, leaning forward to fumble under the seat. Nick saw him tug—then yank harder, an apish grunt escaping him—and the front seat pulled suddenly away from him. Pomeroy sat up, situating himself—strapping the seatbelt around him and adjusting the rearview mirror so that Nick could see a square of bruised, yellow flesh, those beady eyes. The sedan swallowed him, a child playing grown-up. All Nick could see of him was a balding pate rising just above the headrest.
“Way I figure it, you’re worth another hundred grand.” His eyes narrowed. He rubbed his jaw, his hand singing over the day’s stubble. “At least that.”
Pomeroy rambled on as he guided the car through the quiet, winding streets of College Park. Midday. Most of the residents would be in class or cramming for exams. Nick thought of the waves, coming and coming again—not thinking of the way Tucker’s finger seemed to curl beyond the edge of the overturned table, beckoning him to come look at the mess he’d made of things; not thinking of the way Sue had screamed and screamed, her maimed hand clutched to her breasts. Most of all not thinking of what might be happening to Sue right now.
Nick did not look down at the watch.
Pomeroy’s words bore through the waves. Nick heard how they were heading to Atlanta and the Barrett manor, how Pomeroy planned to hand the tape over to Casey’s father, how he would sit back as A. R. Barrett watched his daughter die her horrible death. He heard how Pomeroy planned to comment on the striking similarities between the thin, masked man in the cinder block room and the boy from a nowhere berg in North Carolina.
Nick refused to meet Pomeroy’s mirrored gaze; he looked out the window. The far edge of Ransom slid past, shotgun shacks and dirt yards. The day was heartlessly bright, the sky an impenetrable cobalt. Nick surrendered and glanced down at Finney’s Rolex.
2:01.
Sue—
Another wave crashed, taking time with it. He should be stepping out of Stillman’s Modern Poetry, his mind empty but for the deliberate obscurity of Wallace Stevens, the anticipation of Sue’s warm embrace, the endless possibility of another crisp, Tuesday afternoon.
“I figure when Mr. Barrett sees this tape, it won’t fuckin matter how much you look like the man in the tape. He’ll see red.” Pomeroy held the tape up, his eyes squinting against the afternoon sun. “He’ll see you.” Pomeroy dropped the tape onto the seat beside him. It sounded to Nick like a second finger hitting the Pachyderm’s blotter. Nick watched it twitch, a mutant antenna reading the world.
“Hell, I’ll be a goddamn hero.” Pomeroy flipped the sun visor down and turned on the radio, tuning it to a country station. Someone sang about a three-day drunk and a girl named Mary Lou. Groaning, Pomeroy settled in for the ride.
The waves turned black, heavy with despair. And out of them—so real Nick looked at the seat next to him—came his father’s voice: Time waits for no man. In the saw he’d heard a thousand times from Frank Laymon, usually in a voice thick with Jack Daniel’s, he realized he had no choice. Still staring at the seat that did not hold his father, he saw that surrender was too simple. He was a survivor—not by choice or nature or even because Fate s
omehow favored him—but because he was his father’s son, born to ride the eternal crest of misery. He survived—as his father had—because there was always more pain.
He swallowed hard and pushed the waves aside, allowing Sue at last to fill his mind. Saw again—
—come back to me, sweetie—
—hope feebly relighting her eyes. He would survive for her. The decision made, his heart racing, he looked out the window. A Mustang blaring a monstrous bass line roared by. They were just outside of Ransom, a hilly back road area, headed the wrong way, farther and farther from Sue. Another four or five minutes and they would hit the highway. After that, it was interstate straight into the heart of Atlanta. Four hours at most.
Four fingers.
Panic sang at the edges of his brain. He looked about him, searching desperately for some plan, some way out. Pomeroy slowed the car, the eyes in the mirror ignoring Nick, studying instead the road as it dipped and swayed through the foothills.
Nick lowered his head into his hands, kneading his temples, forcing himself to think. Sue. That was when he glimpsed the first break he’d had in hours, since pocketing the hard roll of bills. From beneath the seat protruded the yellowed-ivory butt of Pomeroy’s gun, the one Evans had taken from Finney and dropped beside the seat. Instinctively, Nick started to grab for the gun—
And caught himself, a gesture half-arrested, a quick, guilty glance into the rearview mirror. Pomeroy met his gaze. “Settle down, boy. We got quite a trip ahead of us. Might as well kick back and try to relax—seein as how it’ll be your last ride and all.” The eyes flicked back to the road. Pomeroy slowed to take a hairpin turn. Another couple minutes and they’d be on the highway. Whatever Nick did, he had to do it now.
Everything is time.
Before the plan had fully formed, Nick doubled over, making dirty retching noises. He heard Pomeroy mutter, “Aw, Jesus, again?” and then the car slowed into another turn. Below Pomeroy’s sight, Nick reached for the gun, his hand enclosing the palm-worn ivory butt. He had time for a single panicked thought—
—how many rounds?—
—as he slowly rose, time seeming to hiccup into a denser plane. Still searching for the end of his plan, he raised himself on the seat and—with both hands gripping the butt—pressed the barrel against the hard wire cage.
“Pull over, Pomeroy.” His voice gravelly, as if he hadn’t spoken in decades.
“What?” Pomeroy glanced at the mirror—afraid to take his gaze too long from the winding road—and Nick saw his eyes widen infinitesimally, as if the gun was what he’d been expecting all along. “Well, there she is! I wondered what you boys had done with Bessie. That gun and me have—”
“Shut up! Pull the car over now! Pull it over now or I’ll—”
But Nick had no idea what he would do. His pseudo-plan evaporated like early morning mist. His mind pinwheeled with frantic images: Sue wailing her hideous, lost cry, her eyes vacant; Finney flailing forever backward; Casey Nicole Barrett straining against a chain that was far too short.
“Now!” he roared. “Pull this fucking car over now or I’ll blow your fucking head off!”
The car slowed, but Pomeroy made no move to pull to the shoulder. A pick-up passed in the other lane, an old man waving without looking, sun splintering brightly across his windshield. Pomeroy watched Nick, his bloodshot eyes flicking quickly between the road and the mirror. Nick could see the tiny webbing of veins running through the cornea.
“Now let’s just think—”
“No more thinking,” Nick said, his voice quiet. He felt calmer. He’d gotten Pomeroy’s attention. He was listening now. “Pull it over now and get out.”
“I don’t think so, son.” The car picked up speed. A sign flashed past. One mile and they would hit the highway.
“You don’t think so?” Nick slammed the barrel against the cage. “You don’t fucking think so?” He pulled the hammer back, the click like a bone snapping. Doubt nagged him. Maybe Pomeroy was right. He couldn’t kill, not from behind, not in cold blood, not the old Nick anyway. And he didn’t know about the new Nick—the Nick that had felt the pull of the money, of the tape, like a strange, new star swimming in his ken. And then he no longer had time to debate the issue. He saw that Pomeroy had only one hand on the steering wheel; his right hand—
—his shooting hand—
—had disappeared. As Pomeroy drew his hand from under Finney’s sweater—a liquid motion that surprised Nick with its speed, its fluidity—Nick fired.
The explosion was enormous.
Time skipped a beat—Nick saw Pomeroy’s eyes widen in disbelief—pitching Nick and Ernie Pomeroy and Evans’s car into a slow motion reel.
As the slug hurtled from its chamber, a voice screamed inside Nick’s head—
—what have you done?—
—and the cruiser swerved wildly into the other lane.
A fist-sized hole appeared in the windshield. Blood and tiny bits of flesh splashed across the dash. Venting a primal shriek of rage and fear, Pomeroy clutched his chest; he yanked the steering wheel back to the right as he collapsed across the seat.
The car swerved sharply back across the right lane and onto the graveled shoulder, clipping an exit sign. What looked like a small bird smacked loudly into the windshield and disappeared over the roof. Something heavy—
—Finney God Finney—
—rolled in the trunk, smacking the partition behind the back seat with a thump. The car veered into a shallow ditch, throwing Nick—the gunshot still echoing through his head—into the floorboard as it hurtled downhill, through a sparse stand of saplings. From the floor, struggling to get up, Nick watched the world pitch by: blue sky, tree tops, mountain side, sky again. He had climbed halfway onto the seat, still clutching the gun, when the car slammed into something with a metallic screech. It rocked far to its left, coming off its right wheels and throwing Nick backward into the door. Lightning jagged through his head.
The next few seconds were preternaturally still, as if the world outside the trooper’s car had vanished. Lying face down in the floorboard, Nick could hear the tick of the engine, the moan of the car’s joints and springs, something hissing. The radio popped on, drowning everything in a long, lost caterwaul of lament. As abruptly, the wail ceased.
The hissing became a wheezing, the sound of labored breathing. Pomeroy. Nick groaned and pushed himself from the floor. Bright light flashed behind his eyes. He rested a minute, then dragged himself onto the back seat, collapsing against the passenger-side door. The cruiser leaned at a precarious angle, the nose pointing downhill. He tentatively flexed his arms, his legs. Nothing seemed broken. Gingerly, he touched the back of his head; pain flared. He could feel the crust of blood from where he had fallen at the Smokin Mountain—but no new gash or knot. He hurt everywhere.
Then he remembered: Sue! He glanced frantically at Finney’s watch.
2:33.
Panic rolled through him in a hot wave. He must have blacked out, must have—
Pomeroy groaned from the front, the sound ending in a gurgling growl, like a man drowning in soupy air. Groaning in unison with Pomeroy, a duet of pain, Nick leaned forward and pulled himself to the edge of the seat. He glanced through the rear window. He could see the tracks where the car had plowed down a small incline and through the copse of skeletal trees. The road was thirty yards away.
Pomeroy groaned again, and Nick turned back to the cage.
As he stared through the grid, several holes just above the seat suddenly sprouted four pale, wriggling creatures. Hairless and ugly, they looked like newborn mice, some species of mutant worm. His mind in slow riot, Nick stared at the creatures. They squirmed erratically, becoming longer—becoming, Nick finally saw, realization dawning in him like the slow bloom of a deep-sea flower, Ernie Pomeroy’s fingers.
Behind the fingers, Pomeroy’s battered face levered into view; he sneered at Nick, tiny spatters of blood flecking his lips, a mixture of blood and snot leaking
from his nose. With great effort—his breathing labored, the sound of a faraway locomotive—he said, “I’m gonna fucking kill you.”
Pomeroy leaned back against the steering wheel, his right hand still enmeshed in the cage, his left hand clamped over his right breast, blood oozing between his fingers. The hand crawled down his shirtfront. Going for his gun, Nick thought. Gotta move. Only then did he realize that his gun was gone. He looked frantically about him, his hands frisking the seat beside him. Pomeroy’s hand reached the tail of Finney’s black sweater, lifting it, exposing a quick flash of silver. Nick threw himself onto the floorboard—every knock and bruise singing—and saw the barrel of the pistol protruding from under the passenger seat. He heard a guttural grunt. The cage rattled. Pomeroy lifting himself up. Nick grabbed the barrel and swung the gun up in a furious arc, bringing the ivoried butt down on Pomeroy’s fingers. There was a soft crunching snap—a small stick breaking underfoot. Nick felt more than heard Pomeroy stiffen, his whole body going rigid with the shock of pain. He brought the gun down again on the fingers in another brutal stroke. One of the fingers—the index, Nick thought—burst, jetting a stream of blood across the back of the seat. Pomeroy howled. Nick heaved himself up—his own aches for the moment forgotten—and turned the gun around, his finger seeming naturally to seek out the cool curve of the trigger.
“Freeze, motherfucker, just-freeze!”
Pomeroy was frozen, his entire body contorted into a tight ball of pain, his face twisted into a rictus of wide, wide hurt. He had half-freed his gun. The barrel caught in the loose web of Finney’s waistband. Slowly, Pomeroy’s face relaxed into a semblance of its battered self, a pulpy mass of bruises and whisker stubble and welts. The makeshift bandage over his nose had come loose on one side; it fluttered with each gasp like a flag of surrender. He let go of the gun, and then of the cage, collapsing against the steering wheel.
