by Jake Hinkson
The girl didn't know what to say. No one ever did.
She tried.
"It wasn't your fault."
"Yes, it was." More ash, more charred wood and mildew. My eyes stung. "It's an inexplicable lapse. Not of judgment, because I never would have done it on purpose, but a lapse of ... mind. The only thing I know to compare it to is when you drive somewhere, and you're thinking about something else, and when you get to where you're going you realize you have no memory of the drive. The auto-pilot part of your brain did the driving while the active part of your brain planned your day. That's a wholly inadequate explanation—wholly inadequate for me more than anyone else—but it's the only one I have."
"Did ... they put you in jail?"
"No. It's up to the DA to bring charges. The guy here knew it was an accident. He let me go, but I wish I'd gone to jail. I wish they'd executed me. Some people thought they should have. But they let me go.
"I didn't leave the house for a month. The church tried to be supportive, but people couldn't look at me anymore. I scared them. Some people just thought I was a monster. Others were scared of me because they knew I wasn't. I was a kind, loving father who'd accidentally killed his child. The only thing worse than being a monster is being a daily reminder that horrible things happen for no reason at all.
"Carrie tried to stay with me. She really did. She tried to forgive me. But how can you stay with the man who killed your child? I became the thing I'd done. I couldn't even help her grieve. She lost her child and her husband that day.
"She left me. That was the last time I prayed. I told God I hated him. I came here and burned this place to the ground. They put me in jail, but the church refused to press any charges and then they interceded on my behalf with the DA, again, not to bring criminal charges against me. Their forgiveness just hurt more. I wanted someone to punish me. The church just moved locations. We'd been talking about moving closer to the highway for a while. They saw it as a chance to start over. So they did.
"That was last year. I drifted down to Little Rock. A couple of days ago was the one year ... anniversary of the ... of me burning down the church. I started thinking. Started drinking."
"And that's when you killed yourself."
"Yes."
"Jesus. I'm sorry, Elliot. I'm so sorry."
I had never told anyone what had happened. At the time of it happening, everyone already knew. Later, when I'd moved away and the story had disappeared with the next day's news cycle, I'd kept my sin to myself. I saw no reason to beg forgiveness from strangers.
"We should go upstairs," I said.
Three faced me as a dim outline in the dark. She turned just a bit, and I could barely see her face.
"Okay," she said.
I followed her to the stairs and up toward the blue-black sky.
I stopped halfway up the step. "Hey."
She turned around at the top. "Yeah."
"I want you to hide in the woods."
"What?"
"I want you to hide in the woods until this is over."
"Why? You don't think I can do this? Hell, I'm the one here knows what she's doing with a shotgun."
"I know. But I want you to hide in the woods. I'm going to get Stan to come down here with me."
"What the hell are you talking about? The plan—"
"I know what the plan was. It doesn't matter. All that matters is that you and Felicia don't get hurt. I want you to hide in the woods. I'll bring Stan down here. I'm starting to get a bad feeling. It this thing goes wrong, you let him go. You don't take a shot at him and you don't go back to the shipment. Forget about the money. You just hide and wait and when he leaves, you get out of Arkansas and don't stop running."
"What if this Felicia broad is in on the deal with Stan?"
"Then you let her go. That's my problem. No matter what happens to me, you take care of yourself."
She sucked in her top lip like she might be mad at me. Then she said, "I'll hide in the woods. But if the shooting starts and I can do anything, you can be damn sure I'll do it."
I knew there would be no use arguing the point. She would do what she would do. "Just take care of yourself," I said.
I started back down the stairs, but she said, "Hey."
Turning back, I said, "Yeah."
"What was your baby's name?"
"Why?"
"I just want to know."
"Her name was Felicia."
-CHAPTER TWENTY-
The Mercy Seat
I had been listening to the dripping of the pipes for less than a minute when I heard a car in the distance. Instinctively, I reached for the small flashlight in my pocket. I stopped myself, steadied my breathing and crouched down.
I expected Stan to park by Three's truck, but the car rolled up right to the burned church. Light spilled down the steps. I'd been sitting in the dark so long, the glare blinded me.
"Goddamn it," I cursed. Why had he come straight to the hole? I had to move. If he left the headlights on and came downstairs, I'd be better off hiding behind the steps.
Crunching blindly across debris, I hurried as quietly as I could, hoping the idle of Stan's engine would cover the sound of my movement downstairs. I dropped next to the charred steps as the engine cut off, followed by the light.
Everything was dark again except for the spots of purple floating across my vision. I shook my head, trying to adjust back to the dark. Outside, a door opened and closed. I heard Felicia call my name, "Elliot!"
I tried to breathe through my nose. The pipes dripped.
Then, behind me. From the darkness of a burned out classroom, all at once: footsteps, a burst of light and two small metallic claps. I spun around, but when I did my right shoulder fell apart. At the same instant there was a jab in my gut. Something exploded in my shoulder and shot down to my fingers, and my shotgun tumbled to the floor. My stomach burst. As I hit the damp, soot-covered floor, my belly started to ooze.
The light shone down on me. Stan knelt by my head, flashlight in one hand and the gun with the long silencer in the other.
His suit was disheveled and black with grime, his red hair dripping with sweat. Ash and sweat streaked his face.
"Come down here," he yelled up the stairs.
At the top of the steps, a flashlight clicked on, and Felicia walked down.
"Stan?" she said.
Stan stood up, holding the gun at his side. "That's right, baby. Come on down here with me and Elliot."
In her left hand, Felicia held her small handgun. She walked nearly to the bottom of the groaning stairs, about two steps up, with the flashlight steady in her hand. "Why'd you bring him down here?" she asked.
"Came down on his own. I was here hiding and he walked over and came downstairs. Guess he had the same idea. I just got here first."
As Stan spoke, I tried to reach the shotgun with my good arm, but he kicked me in the face. My vision burst, and my nose collapsed.
"Behave yourself," he told me.
Through the crisscross of flashlight beams, I could barely make out Felicia's face. She didn't look scared.
"Did you find out where the truck is?" she asked.
Stan said, "Elliot, tell Felicia where the truck is."
In a bloody mumble I told them where I'd parked it.
Felicia's face flickered in and out of focus just over the flare from her flashlight, and it seemed like a different face each time it came back in focus. Sad. Defiant. Guilty. Greedy.
Stan knelt beside me. "She betrayed you for the money. I guess you put that together by now."
I didn't say anything. Nothing to say. Let them all go. Felicia could go on her way and live the life she'd chosen. Three could get away.
Stan said, "Felicia, you want to say anything to Elliot here?"
"Stop it, Stan. There's no need to torture him."
"I'm serious. The man only has a couple of minutes left to live. Do you want his last thoughts to be bad ones about you?"
Sh
e lowered her flashlight and stood half-obscured in darkness and half-revealed in pale light from above.
"Why is he smiling?"
"Elliot," Stan said, "she wants to know why you're smiling." Stan leaned down close to me, with the flashlight in my face, his sweat dripping on me. "I know why. It's because you get to be a martyr. That it, Elliot? You get to redeem yourself by saving Felicia and the Thickroot girl?"
Felicia took another step down. "What do you mean?"
"I mean Elliot doesn't care that he's dying because he sees his dying as a way to atone for his sins." Stan chewed the inside of his cheek. "Right?"
Felicia's voice quivered as she said, "I'm sorry, Elliot. I really—a"
Stan shot her in the chest as she was speaking, and she jerked backward and hit the wall. Her feet slipped forward, and she tumbled down the last step and shot the concrete floor. Stan rose up, his gun outstretched, but Felicia was dead.
He sighed heavily through his nose. He shone the light down in my face. "You still with me, Elliot?"
I tried to say something, but it came out in tangle of blood and spit.
"What?" he said.
"Felicia."
"She's better off," Stan said. "You know, up until the point you called me I had every intention of letting her live. But when you said you wanted to meet here, of all places, then it clicked. The preacher that killed his baby and burned down his church.
"Then I knew why it had never been about the money with you. It was about redemption this whole time. You wanted to save Felicia."
Light pierced my eyes like I was on an examination table.
"Why you shoot her?" I asked weakly.
"Because of you," he said. "You killed your baby, Elliot. Even I couldn't bring myself to eat my lunch while my only child boiled to death in the parking lot. But I can deny you your redemption. What better way to ensure the glory of my own salvation than to deny you yours?"
Everything disappeared for a moment. Then it came back.
"I can't ... move," I managed to say.
"You're going to have to. You have to go up those steps where your little friend is waiting. She heard Felicia's gun, and now I bet she's taking a real good aim at the top of these stairs."
"Don't hurt her," I said.
"Why not?"
"Please."
"'Please' isn't a reason, Elliot. That's what people like you never understand."
"She's innocent."
"So was your child, Elliot."
I spit out blood. My head floated, tethered only tenuously to my neck. My limbs buzzed, heavy and numb.
"Please," I said.
"Please again," Stan grunted. He pulled my right arm and I felt nothing. He yanked me up and pushed me against the wall.
"Listen to me," he said. "I like you. I did from the start. I told Thickroot to kill you quick, but he was incompetent, and you worked your way out of that. Good for you. You bought yourself another few hours. But now here you are, and you are going up those stairs."
I didn't try to talk.
He said, "You know why you're going up those stairs? Because if you don't, I'll go out there and get her. I'll bring her down here, and I'll gut her like a deer." He slapped my face. "And you'll watch every bit of it."
"Icanbarelymove."
"You can move. You wanted to die, didn't you? Well, here you go. Go up there, take the kid's bullets. If you're lucky, she's run off already. If not, I promise you I'll make it quick like Felicia. She won't suffer."
I nodded. Stan pushed me closer to the steps. As I tried to walk, my legs were sticky with blood from my belly. Felicia lay sprawled across the steps with her blue eyes open and her head bent to the side as if she were incredulous. The gun had kicked out of her hand when it fired and lay near her foot. I touched the black star on her wrist.
Stan pushed me up the first step. "This is it," he said. "It's time to go explain yourself to God."
I climbed the steps like a man climbing the gallows. I wasn't afraid of Three shooting me. I assumed she would and then that would be the end of me. I didn't worry about that. I worried about whether or not she could get away before Stan got to her. And if she did, would she have the sense to keep running? To flee Arkansas and Stan the Man?
"Keep going," Stan said.
My shoes were wet now. I heard it more than felt it. I didn't know if it was blood or sweat. All I could feel was my life seeping out my stomach as I tried to pull air into my lungs.
The first weak rays of morning shone down on me as I stumbled up the steps, but I could see the moon, faint and bruised, shaking in the sky as I climbed toward it. I would be dead in a moment ... I'll never see Felicia again ... never apologize to her for the pain I caused her ... in our marriage ... and ... no, Carrie ... and the day I asked Carrie to be my wife ... Carrie ... my baby's pale body falling away from me into the darkness ... Three falling away from me ...
go, stan said
the moon trembled like a dying woman's last words, and i threw myself backward onto stan, and we shattered the stairs like a wrecking ball, splintering wood and nails and brick, and stan the man snapped beneath me when we smashed into the concrete floor and the world collapsed on top of us
the sky hurried over me i tried to move but i couldn't feel anything to move
be still she said we're going to the hospital
treetops the rush of air through a window
i tried to speak but i had no voice no mouth
just stay with me she said that was the last thing i heard her say
just stay with me
†
About the Author
Jake Hinkson writes for the film journal NOIR CITY and is the author of the novel Hell on Church Street.
Titles from BEAT to a PULP available in print:
And for Kindle:
Plus more titles:
A Rip Through Time
BEAT to a PULP: Superhero
The Education of a Pulp Writer: 10 Crime Short Stories
Pluvial Gardens and other poems
Vin of Venus
From the "Hawthorne" series:
Plus more titles:
The Long Black Train
The Spider Tribe
From the "Cash Laramie and Gideon Miles" series:
Plus more titles:
Adventures of Cash Laramie and Gideon Miles
Adventures of Cash Laramie and Gideon Miles Vol. II
Bullets for a Ballot
Miles to Little Ridge
The Guns of Vedauwoo
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