GIVE ME YOUR LIFE AND I GIVE YOU EVERYTHING
She opened her eyes and saw the stains on the doctor’s blue tie. He stood between her legs with his arms moving toward her.
“Just another minute and we’ll be done.”
“Stop!” Emeline kicked away. “Don’t put the poison in me! Stop!” She clasped her knees and pain exploded in her broken leg. “No! I can’t! I can’t!”
Emeline wriggled back, then sideways, and locked her good leg around her other. She rejoiced in the pain of it.
The doctor stopped. “There’s no refunding the hundred dollars.”
“Just take me back to my car.”
“That’s a good girl,” the old woman said.
Forty
Chambers parks the Ford by the barn. The bed contains two fifty-five gallon drums, a mess of copper, three hundred pound feed corn, several five-gallon buckets of sand, bricks, a bag of cement.
“I’ll be back with the torch,” I say. “Jake—run down the basement and get the hoe.”
“Where’d she take my car?” Chambers says.
“Hell if I know. Didn’t think she could drive.”
Chambers slaps the hood of the F-100. “I’m liable to straighten her out.”
I fix my eye on Chambers. “Piece of advice. Don’t ever tell a man you’ll correct his woman.” I sip from the jug. “She won’t take your car again.”
I enter the barn and return a minute later with a butane torch, clicker, and a roll of solder. Jam them into gaps in the cargo. Jacob sticks a hoe handle in a bucket of sand and climbs to the sacks of feed.
Chambers drives down the slope, does a three-point turn and backs to the boat, which rests upside down at the bank. We right it and load cement bags until water approaches four inches from the side.
“That’s enough,” Chambers says.
I pass him an oar. “You still got that pistol?”
Chambers reaches to the small of his back.
“Gotta get real careful,” I say. “You never know who sees something you did, or who wants to curry favor by turning you in.”
Chambers shoves off. I hoist a bucket of sand from the bed and angle for the woods. “Jacob, grab the shovel and the rifle from back of the seat.”
Jacob runs to the truck. “You want I should bring this?”
I turn. Jacob holds the .38. “Careful, now. Stick it in your pocket.”
A breeze kicks up with a smell that’s electric, almost. I look across the lake. A thunderhead gathers at the horizon a thousand yards off. The walnut’s leaves are upside down. As Jacob closes in, I plant my hand on the bark. “C’mon, talk to me, old man.”
I close my eye and trees surround me, the picture is clear in the middle and opaque at the edges. A man stands with a grimace and a rifle. The image rushes away and another follows. A second man, sprawled on a rock, bleeds.
“Whatcha doin’, Pap?”
“Git on, boy. Leave me be.”
I hear Jacob’s feet in the grass. The image is gone. I press the tree until my hand holds the bark pattern. “What is it? C’mon! C’mon!”
Nothing. Jacob’s gone ahead following yesterday’s ruffled leaves. I trail him and we meet Chambers at the shore. The boat unloaded, Chambers returns to the truck for more while Jacob and I carry the load farther into the woods.
Pausing near an oak, I wipe my brow. Have a taste for the bottle—damn near a certifiable need—but I left it at the truck.
A twig pops. I hold my hand up and Jacob halts. “Y’hear that?”
“No, Pap.”
“Yeah.” I cock my head, search the trees, the undergrowth. A squirrel chatters. A crow caws. “Run and fetch Rebel on a twine lead.”
We work, enclosed in semi-darkness. The coming storm brings muggy air. By late afternoon Chambers ferries the last haul to the bank. I’ve carried most everything a hundred yards from shore to a draw with a stream at the fold. At the last load Chambers hefts a sack of grain and follows me to the site.
Carrying a bucket of sand, I lean hard to the right. My eye searches the trees, rocks, each fallen log or bump of land. I feel eyes on the back of my head. I twist and catch Chambers with my peripheral sight. He grins.
Hair stands on my neck.
The crick bed’s eroded two feet into naked roots and rocks. At the low end of a long pool, a mossy ring suggests a dam constructed by boys who rolled the heaviest stones they could find within a hundred yards either direction, and pasted the gaps with mud.
“That your doing?” Chambers says.
“Nah. Mine washed away thirty-five years ago. Deet did that.”
“Hell of an engineer.”
“Fuck.” I drop the bucket of sand and slap a deerfly on my neck. “I hate these fuckin things.”
My senses tingle. After the first haul I took the .38 from Jacob and shoved it in my pants. The front sight post rubbed my ass raw so I stuffed the pistol in my crotch, considered the freak chance of a misfire leaving my family jewels in the mud, and laid the gun on a stump. I’d trust Rebel’s ears and nose. This early into an operation, the top reason for security is to establish the habit. That last vision at the tree is probly a few days, or weeks off. Still, I can’t shake the sense an adversary is nearby.
“Where we building?” Chambers says.
“We’ll put the boiler here.” I scratch my neck. “Back far enough the side won’t erode from under. We dig a pit for the fire, twelve inches deep, lined with brick and cement, with an open channel to the crick. When we’re done, a bucket of water’ll carry the coals to the stream. We put a doubler two feet off and coil the copper through the second barrel. We got a release valve for the water at the bottom, and we keep it full of cool crick water when we’re in a run. That’ll be a full-time job for Jake.”
I stoop to a jug of whiskey and see Rebel. His muzzle is on the dirt; his good eye probes the woods. Leaves rustle and a sparrow darts from limb to limb. Rebel’s ears perk. He jumps to his feet and strains against the rope, his tail straight and still, chest twitching.
I gulp whiskey. “Somethin’ spooked Rebel.”
“Rebel?” Chambers says. “What, a chipmunk?”
“I don’t like it.”
Sunlight speckles glide back and forth on the ground with the sway of trees and as I look overhead the sun disappears behind storm clouds.
“You got the jitters, is all.” Chambers says. He steps back, his legs spread shoulder-wide. “Something I wanted to mention to you. Been eating at me, you know?”
I hear his tone.
“You want to get a hole dug, right about here?” I indicate where I want the boiler. My gaze falls on Jacob. The deer rifle leans on an oak beside him, and a few feet to his left is the .38.
“Well, that’s just the thing,” Chambers says. “I don’t think I do.”
I face Chambers. His smile don’t match his eyes. “Plenty of daylight. Don’t slack now.”
“I like the way you thought all this out. I kinda had a plan like this. Fact, this is just about the way I’d a done it.” Chambers reaches to his back. “But we got to talk about something else, altogether.”
He holds his Luger at his side. “You see, here’s how it is. Emeline—”
“YOU THERE! Don’t move! Federal officers!”
A dozen yards away, a man steps from behind a car-sized boulder and aims a shotgun from his hip.
Rebel finally growls.
Forty One
Chambers jumps behind a line of mash barrels. Jacob hunkers at a stump.
“What of it?” I call, and glide behind the tree with the rifle. I glance at Chambers—he signals one finger, then two, and shrugs.
“Aw, come on out,” the man says. “Hands in the air.”
“Got us surrounded, do you?” I crack the .30-30 lever open, view brass in the chamber. Close it and pull the hammer. Chambers crawls along the row of barrels. Rebel whines. Lightning flashes and after a four-count, thunder sounds.
“That’s right.”
“No reason to get hostile. Just want to talk.”
“Talk ransom, is what you wanna talk.” I watch the man through wavering leaves and sneak a look left and right. Chambers, still behind barrels, scans the terrain behind our position. Jacob watches me with bug-eyed expectation.
“That’s how it is with you people,” I say. “A man puts his back and his money into an enterprise and you fucks come along.”
“We want to talk about your intentions with all this equipment.”
“We, hunh? You federal?”
“Department of Revenue.”
“I knew it. I never seen a bunch of folks that do so little and take so much.”
“I’m an agent of the law, Hardgrave, and I’m losing what patience I brought. I’m not a fool. You don’t have six mash drums for personal use.”
“I drink more’n you think.”
“Now come out from behind that tree so I can see you. Same for your buddy by the barrels.”
A thistle bush—the kind my mother used for making gumdrop trees at Christmas—obstructs my line of fire. But the .30-30 is a brush gun—shoots fat slow bullets that locomote through all kinds of shit. Like thistle. I poke the barrel through a notch in the tree where a branch splits from the trunk. The man looks back and forth and his shotgun drifts toward the ground.
“You’re bluffing,” I say. “You’re alone.”
“You think what you want. But touch that trigger, and you’ll bleed from more holes than you can count.”
That’s me. Dumb hick can’t count bullet holes.
I line the sights on the revenuer’s chest and fire. The man pops backward and claws the ground. I crouch and watch for motion between the tree trunks. The clap of a heavy-bore rifle rings from the left; I scamper around the tree.
“Shit!” Chambers calls. “My leg!”
I crawl backward and slide over the eroded creek bank. Keeping to the dry side of the bed, I low-crawl toward the lake.
Another shot sounds and Chambers cries, “You can shoot the dog all day,” Chambers laughs. He squeezes off several rounds from his Luger.
“Where they at, Brad?”
“Eleven o’clock,” Chambers calls. “But that last shot was someone different.”
I bang my knees wriggling thirty yards on rocks. Where the streambed curves, I turn up a small wash that carries runoff from the upper cornfield. I peek over the bank then slither forward. Leaves rustle against a backdrop of moans and the pounding heartbeat in my ears. I stop, and raise my eye over a knoll.
At my left, Chambers rests on the ground with his shoulders leaning against a barrel. His hands hold his leg. Tree limbs sway. Above, the sky grows blacker. I recall the images from the walnut tree, hours earlier. Chambers said he counted three men, but my vision was of two.
I don’t know what to expect.
Finally, motion. The lawman lays prone across an upsloping boulder with a rifle trained at Chambers. I press the .30-30 stock to my shoulder, rest the muzzle against a cherry tree, and fire.
The man screams and flips over, clutching his ass.
“That’s for the dog!” I shoot again. This one goes high and destroys the man’s neck.
“Chambers!”
“Hey.”
“Any more ‘em?”
“One. Last shot was above me, but he could be anywhere by now.”
“Stay down ‘til I scout a bit.” I’ve used up my visions; I’m on my own.
I step forward, careful of twigs and leaves. Each crunch triggers a shiver down my back. I stalk along a wide circle, holding the rifle stock in the crook of my elbow with my finger looped across the trigger. My breath comes in long pulls; I wish to hell I had two eyes, but all I’d see is the impending storm. A gust crackles through the limbs above; I glide from tree to tree, pausing at each to survey the terrain.
I recognize the pop of Jacob’s .38.
Three rapid shots follow, heavier caliber than before. I search, see the flash of a man’s face, and sight my rifle. The man swings his head around like a wary doe and I fire. His head snaps sideways and he falls. He jiggles a bit and is still.
I crouch. If a fourth man lurks, he ain’t betrayed himself with speech or gunfire—but I’ve given away my location. The thought of being in another man’s rifle sights makes my nuts scrunch. I crawl to a boulder and look behind, seek the sheen of metal or the outline of a head, shoulders, and elbow.
“Angus, you better come,” Chambers’ voice trails.
I am still.
“They shot your boy and they shot me.”
The storm drops its first volley of raindrops and they patter the leaves.
“Shot me real bad.”
I wait. A breeze flows downhill. A fat drop lands square in the middle of my back; the sudden coldness is electric like a bullet and I grin. Alive.
“Angus, I’m bleedin’ hard,” Chambers moans.
I study trees, brush, rocks.
“I think Jake’s dead,” he says.
I am still. Rain drips from the leaves. Twigs fall around me. Each noise draws my eye. A rock below my groin presses against a vein and my leg tingles. Still I wait. A half hour passes; I’m getting cold. The storm is digging in for a long slog. Chambers has been silent and nary a squirrel has moved for an interminable time. I wiggle sideways and blood rushing through my leg makes it burn. I crane my neck left and watch until the muscles ache, then turn right for an equal time. Finally I climb to my knees, then stand. I advance, careful of twigs, and study the topography. I wonder about Emeline, where she drove off to. About the Sharps above the mantle. Could’ve rigged it to blow up in her face, but plum didn’t think of it. I’d hear her, walking with a cast and a woman’s piss poor instincts in the woods. I walk and even after getting Em in context I still expect a bullet to knock me on my ass.
I stand over the last man I shot, who fell with the exit in his skull exposed. His brain looks like a big mess of fish guts with no heads or tails.
Thunder booms. My knees are rubber. I make a circuit around the still site, stopping at each dead agent, kicking a foot, stepping on his back. I get lost in the third’s gemstone eyes. I shot him in the head and the back half is gone and both his eyes are half shit out their sockets. Wish I knew how to keep one and maybe get some use of it. Have to ask Jonah about that.
I orient on the fifty-five gallon barrels and hurry my step.
Chambers’ face is like ashes in a fire pit. The fire’s out, but embers glow. He’s fashioned a tourniquet with his belt but to little effect. Blood soaks his thigh and the leaves beneath. There’s more blood than a man might believe he carries. He smiles. I touch the rifle trigger, and point at his belly.
“Thought you’d leave me here to die,” he whispers.
“Might, yet. Where’s Jake?”
His eyes point straight ahead. I swipe the Luger from his hand, stuff it under my waistband and cross to the stream bank. Jacob is face down in Deet’s brook; his hair stretches on a surface clouded pink with blood.
I watch Jacob float. The storm picks up and rain strikes the pool like June bugs. I wade in; drag Jacob by his collar to the bank. I put my fingers to his throat. Nothing. Press his eyelids closed. They won’t stay, and Jacob stares.
I return to Chambers.
“You was gonna say something about Emeline.”
“That wasn’t nothing.”
“You fuck her too?”
Jonah ain’t showed me anything about Chambers. If he was set to be a problem today I expect I’d have known about it.
“I got to pick up your leg.” I brace Chambers’ foot at my groin, lift, and cut the trouser above the gunshot with his boot knife. I drink walnut whiskey then flush blood from the entry side.
Chambers grunts, “That shit tastes better ‘n it feels.”
“Passed clean through—but left a hell of a hole.” I rub whiskey into the exit wound. “I’m gonna patch y
ou up then I got work to do. One more piece of business needs done and ain’t never going to be a time like now. Here, take a drink.”
I pin Chambers’ pant leg with my knee, cut two lengthwise strips and bind a wad of cloth to the exit side. In a couple of minutes, he’s ready to travel.
“I gotto get you out of here, but you got to help. Brad?” I tap his cheek. “Stay awake. You ain’t hit bad, but you lost a bucket of blood. C’mon now; wake up.”
I snake my arm behind Chambers’ back, wrestle him to his feet. We stagger through dells and over hillocks to the water. I lean him over the boat edge, and flop his feet in. Lightning flashes at the far side of the lake. The boom echoes across the water.
“Don’t sink me,” he says.
I board and sit with the oar in my hand. Paddling with my right arm will propel me to the center of the lake. I’d have to turn around, and alternate strokes. I look skyward. Plunge the oar into the lake until water reaches my elbow. Finding bottom, I jump over the side. The water reaches my chin. Slipping on mud, I tug the boat along the edge, and tow it ashore at the Ford.
“You got to help me,” I say. “C’mon.” Chambers’ head lolls to the side. He lays in red water. “Shit, boy. C’mon.”
Chambers straightens his neck. “My ass is wet.”
“That’s nothing. C’mon.” I hug him and lift. My back muscles twang like guitar strings. The boat rocks. Chambers gains his feet and falls. On my knees I maneuver him over my shoulder and stagger to the truck.
“You got to drop the tailgate,” I say. “I can’t let go.”
Chambers pulls the latch. The gate drops and the chains plunk taut. I buck him onto the bed.
“Lay back. Let your feet hang.”
“Hurts.”
“Pain is proof you’re alive. You keep awake and we’ll get you patched up. What the hell’s wrong with you?” I hold Chambers’ head aright and peer into his glassy eyes. His lips pull back in a quiet snarl.
I slip into the driver’s seat, start the truck. Grind the clutch. The engine races. I look back. Chambers’ head slumps sideways and his chest deflates like he barters for life but the deal goes south. “’Cause of your bad living,” I say.
Nothing Save the Bones Inside Her Page 30
