Fox On The Run was a bluegrass standard and most of the kids knew it. Though they dispersed in different directions, each wanting their own territory, they joined in singing with Lloyd. Soon the cornfield was filled with the high harmonies of voices singing along.
Before he disappeared from sight, Lloyd winked at Sharon. He knew what he was doing. It was something cotton pickers, the gandy dancers, and the chain gangs had learned a long time ago. Singing made the day go faster, made you forget the inescapable drudgery of your toils. By the time they were done today every child would know the lyrics to this song and possibly a few others.
The work went fast initially. They picked close to the edge of the access road, filling their containers quickly and hauling them back to the golf cart. When it was full, Nathan and Sharon headed to the house to empty them. By the time they got back, another load was ready and waiting.
They continued at this pace for nearly two hours. When Sharon and Nathan returned from their latest trip, they brought a bucket of peaches so everyone could have a snack. As Sharon was handing them out, she noticed they were missing a child.
“Tara!” she called. “Snack time.”
No answer.
“Tara!” Sharon called louder.
“I’ll find her,” Nathan said. “Where was she picking?”
Lloyd pointed in a direction. “She was just over there. She just brought this bucket up and went back with another.” He tapped a full bucket with the toe of his boot.
“Tara!” Nathan called.
“Let’s find her,” Sharon told everyone, a tinge of worry in her voice. “She might have gotten turned around in the corn and you know she gets scared easily.”
“We’ll find her,” Lloyd assured her, heading off after Nathan.
The children fanned out in the corn, calling Tara’s name. Sharon called too, her voice shrill with worry.
“Taraaaaa!”
60
Oliver’s House
When Tara spotted the fawn curled in the dirt like a sleeping puppy, she had to go after it. It couldn’t have been more than a couple of days old, barely larger than a cocker spaniel and dappled with white spots. She crouched and jabbed her hand through the rattling stalks of dry corn that stood between them. She managed to touch the baby deer and squealed in delight. She grew frustrated when it immediately shot to its feet and moved further away. The fawn settled down a few feet beyond its previous bed, likely assuming it was hidden by the high corn.
Tara could hear people calling her name. It sounded like they were looking for her. She knew she should answer them, but if she did she’d scare the deer. She’d never catch it then. On her hands and knees, Tara pushed between two dead stalks in pursuit of the fawn. It heard her coming and cast her a weary glance.
Tara smiled at it. “Hi, baby deer.”
It rose unsteadily and tottered away from her. Tara’s tongue stuck from the side of her mouth, the gesture of a determined child. She crawled faster. In response to the sounds of pursuit, the deer sped up. Tara reacted accordingly, hitting her internal throttle and crawling faster. The fawn was running now, increasing the distance between them. Determined that she was going to catch the fawn and make a pet of it, Tara got to her feet and broke into a run.
She made it two steps before she barreled into someone, a figure she hadn’t noticed standing in the dense corn. Bare arms wrapped tightly around her. She assumed it was one of the older girls or maybe Lloyd sent to find her. She giggled and looked up. The face she found staring down at her was not smiling. In fact, it was not even human. It was the red rubber face of a devil, an evil grin curling its mouth and the stub of horns protruding from its head.
Tara sucked in a breath, preparing to scream, and a hand clamped over her mouth. The face lowered to hers and a warm, foul breath burned her eyes. Beneath the slit in the mask, she could see pink lips with dirt collected at the corners of the mouth.
“You shut the hell up or I’ll hurt you. You hear me?”
When Tara didn’t respond, too petrified to attempt to speak, the devil shook her hard. The move snapped Tara from her spell and she nodded frantically. The devil raised up, hand still over Tara’s mouth, and scanned their surroundings. Reaching into a pocket, the devil extracted a sheet of paper and unfolded it, then tossed it to the ground. They moved deeper into the corn, the devil holding Tara tight to its side, a filthy hand held over her mouth. The hand reeked. Held just below Tara’s nose, it made her want to vomit.
The devil moved faster and faster. With one arm, it batted away corn stalks like they were swarming insects, charging wildly. It was as if they were in a corn maze with no paths and no escape. It was sheer bedlam. The devil soon found it couldn’t make any speed with Tara clutched so tightly to its side. They were bulldozing through the corn stalks rather than slipping between them.
The devil came to a stop and leaned down, whispering into Tara’s ear. “I’m letting go of your mouth but you better not make a peep. I’m warning you.”
Then the devil was running, jerking Tara along behind him. They sliced through the cornfield at a faster pace, and Tara looked behind her, imagining all the things she’d never see again. Sharon, Lloyd, and the other children. The peach tree and the Fairy Circle. The baby deer. She hadn’t even had a chance to snoop around the new house. She didn’t want to leave. She didn’t want to go with this masked devil.
She promised not to do it but she did. She opened her mouth and put everything she had into the loudest scream she’d ever made.
61
Oliver’s House
Sharon had just left the field, returning to the house in her golf cart, thinking Tara might have wandered back to go to the restroom. She’d done that before at the camp, embarrassed to announce that she needed to go. Lloyd and the other children were still combing the field, calling Tara’s name. They assumed it was possible she was just hiding, thinking it was a fun game to make them all look for her. She’d also been known to pull that stunt before, despite stern lectures from Sharon about scaring everyone.
Then they heard the scream in the cornfield.
Lloyd reacted immediately, sprinting through the corn, plowing through it like a human combine. He heard steps behind him and glanced back to find Nathan on his heels.
“Tara!” Lloyd yelled, whipping his head from side to side, looking down the aisles as he ran. Spotting something ahead of him, he stopped in his tracks so abruptly Nathan barreled into him.
“What?” Nathan asked.
Gasping for breath, Lloyd pointed to a white rectangle in the dirt. Nathan grabbed it and held it so Lloyd could read it over his shoulder. A message was scrawled on the grimy paper in blue ink.
Get out by tonight or I kill the kid.
Lloyd shoved Nathan in the direction of the other children. “Go! Show that to Sharon. Get all the kids together and take them to the house.”
Nathan opened his mouth to protest but Lloyd took off running into the corn. Lloyd lowered his head, bringing his arms to a point in front of him like the prow of a ship. The corn thrashed at him, bits of dead leaves and desiccated corn silk sticking to the back of his sweaty neck.
“Tara!”
Based on the note, he had to assume someone was preventing her from answering. Whoever left that note, Kimberly or her son he assumed, had come here to kidnap a child. Somewhere in this vast sea of green and brown they were dragging Tara away from her family. If he lost her, they might never see her again. They would have no choice but to do as the note ordered them. They would have to give up the camp.
Lloyd wished for a tree or a stump, anything he might climb to better see the entirety of that field. There wasn’t anything. It was a sea of flatness, a plane of grown-over sameness and uniformity that made it difficult to see anything. Then it occurred to him that he might be able to hear something even if he couldn’t see.
He stopped in his tracks and listened. When he played music, his finely-tuned ears could pick out the dissonant tone
of a poorly-tuned instrument. Surely he could hear someone dragging a child through a cornfield. It took him a moment to pick it out. He turned his head, scanning like his ear was an antenna, and then he found it. A rhythmic crunch like someone chewing cereal. It was the breaking of cornstalks in the distance.
Lloyd started running again but it wasn’t his superpower. He was made for a slower, more pensive pace. He could play music all day but physical exertion was not his thing. Yet he’d put himself in this situation. He’d come to check on his friend Oliver and found something entirely different. The discovery was unexpected but miraculous at the same time. When he’d seen all of those children trapped here by their desire to play his kind of music, a switch had flipped inside him. He knew he had to stay and be part of it.
In his fantasy, he imagined his stay at the camp would consist of long evenings playing music around a fire. He understood now that it meant more than that. It meant keeping the children safe. It meant doing things like this. For as much as he shunned the violent experiences he’d had over this last year, they were now a part of him. He was a musician and a killer. He was an instructor and a fighter. Both the music and the violence lived within him. As much as Lloyd wanted to leave the violence behind, that might not be an option. There was a reason he ended up at the camp and it might be to bring music, but he had to accept that it might also be for those darker skills he was loath to recall and hesitant to employ.
Several times he paused to listen and get his bearings. The steady brushing of bodies through the corn was closer now. He was gaining on them. He surged ahead. Without warning, he burst from the confinement of the corn and into an open field. The transition was so sudden and disorienting that he stumbled, the feeling similar to that of leaning against a door that is suddenly opened.
He stopped and peered around, spotting a figure running in the distance, tugging a much slower Tara along behind him. Lloyd’s chest was tight from panic and exertion but he ran after them with all he had. The figure heard him coming, twisting his body, and looking back at Lloyd. Lloyd saw the devil mask and was momentarily taken aback, but he knew that mask. He’d seen it before and knew who was likely wearing it. It was Kimberly’s son, the man they called Jaybird.
Slow as Lloyd was, the man was not going to get away while dragging the girl behind him. He screamed at her, shouting for her to go faster, but she couldn’t. Tara was an anchor, dragging him down.
All the while, Lloyd was gaining ground with each passing second. He was close enough now that he could see the man’s struggle, could sense his indecision. Did he release the child? He might escape but he’d have to go home and face his mother empty-handed. Did he make a stand and see if he could negotiate?
Still running, Lloyd dropped a hand to his waistband and slid his fingers beneath the soft leather flap on Buddy’s old GI-style holster. He had the .45 drawn, in his hand, when the man in front of him made his decision. He spun on Lloyd, stopping in his tracks, and pulling Tara tight against him. The blade of a skinning knife flashed in his hand as he laid it across Tara’s throat.
The child froze in fear, her eyes wide. Lloyd suspected the man was scared too, staring down the barrel of a gun, but he couldn’t see anything beneath the ghoulish red mask.
This devil hadn’t anticipated the appearance of a gun. He hadn’t taken steps to raise Tara as a shield between him and Lloyd. The top of Tara’s head reached the bottom of the man’s ribcage. Lloyd had an unobstructed shot at everything above that point.
He knew it wouldn’t stay that way. At any moment, the kidnapper’s slow mind would catch up with the reality of the moment and he would tuck himself behind the child.
Lloyd had one chance and he took it, praying his aim was true as he squeezed the trigger with the slow pressure that Jim had drilled into his head. The hammer fell and the round fired. Birds exploded from the cornfield, startled by the sound. The seventy-year-old handgun bucked in Lloyd’s hand and the man in front of him spun as the round slammed into his face, parting the devil’s left eyebrow in a devastating and irreparable manner.
Tara screamed, the knife dropped, and Lloyd rushed forward, gun still on the fallen man. Tara tried to twist her body, unable to resist the drive to see her attacker, to make certain she was truly safe, but Lloyd got an arm around her head and pulled her to him. He shielded her eyes with his body. She did not see the man’s awkward writhing or the way his movement suddenly ceased with the impact of a second round from Lloyd’s gun.
Lloyd scanned the area around him but saw no sign of Kimberly. If she’d been present for this, for the killing of her son, surely she’d have shown herself. She must have stayed home and sent her son to do the dirty work. The sound of crying against Lloyd’s chest snapped him back to the here and now. They needed to get out of here.
“It’s okay, Tara. I got you. You’re safe.”
When she didn’t reply, Lloyd gathered her in his arms and they headed back toward the cornfield. He shifted Tara to his left side and carried the .45 in his right hand. He couldn’t believe what he’d done, nor how instinctually he’d done it. He’d never killed anyone that close. Even behind the mask, he’d looked that man in the eye as he pulled the trigger. He felt nauseous, sickened by what he’d had to do, but he had not hesitated. He’d killed when he had to and saved a child’s life.
It was not lost on him that this was the thing for which he most criticized Jim. They were more alike than he imagined. Perhaps they’d become more alike over the past year, though Lloyd couldn’t say if it was the circumstances or his friend’s influence that had marshaled this change.
“No! Not the corn!” Tara shrieked as they neared the boundary of high stalks.
She tried to wiggle out of Lloyd’s arms but he wouldn’t let her go. It took him a moment to process that she was terrified of reentering the cornfield. They would have to go around. He looked in both directions, spotting one end of the access road that divided the blocks.
“Okay, sweetie. No corn.”
Not wanting to keep Sharon and the other children in suspense for any longer than necessary, Lloyd trotted the fifty or so yards to the cleared gap. He swung a right but didn’t make it very far before his arm was cramping and his heart pounding. This level of physical activity was not something he did ever. He leaned over and gently set Tara on her feet.
“Can you run with me?” he asked. “I don’t think I can carry you any farther.”
She nodded, her lip quivering. “I’m fast. I’m really fast.”
“Well don’t run so fast that you get ahead of me. I’m old and broke down. Let’s stay together.”
“Then you better hurry,” Tara said, shooting down the weedy lane like an arrow speeding from a bow.
Lloyd grimaced. Maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea after all. He charged after her and found that he did better now that he wasn’t carrying her. Tara was fast and tireless but he managed to stay close enough that she didn’t have to stop to wait on him. In a few minutes, they’d crossed the span of the fields and were nearing the farm road. Lloyd holstered the Colt 1911.
“Hold up,” he gasped. “Let’s do this together.”
Tara stopped, her rapid breathing exaggerated. She held a hand out to Lloyd and he took it. They ran together, emerging from the fields and hitting the farm road. In the distance they could see Oliver’s house, the front porch crowded with the other children. Lloyd was certain Sharon was there too but the shadows made all of the figures blend together.
A cheer went up when the other children saw Lloyd coming with Tara at his side. He couldn’t help but grin, even as his body ached and his lungs burned. He’d done it. He’d saved her.
62
Oliver’s House
Tara wrapped her arms around Sharon’s neck and squeezed mercilessly. Sharon hugged her back just as hard. Sharon’s eyes were not closed in the fervor of the reunion. They were wide open, glued on Lloyd, and full of questions.
“I need you to stay here with the o
ther children,” Sharon said when Tara broke away. “Mr. Lloyd and I are going to speak in the other room. I want you all to stay in here together. Okay?”
There were murmurs of agreement. With their cooperation secured, Sharon led the way down the hall to Oliver’s room. When Lloyd was inside with her, Sharon swung the door shut with a solid thud.
“What were the gunshots?” Her voice was not accusatory but she needed answers.
Lloyd frowned at her, assuming the answer was obvious. “We should have just stayed in the other room. I’m sure Tara is telling the other children all about it right now.”
“Who was it? Who took her?”
“The son,” Lloyd said. “I saw him on the porch with Kimberly when we paid her a visit. He was wearing the same stupid devil mask he had on that day. I think he was alone. I never saw anyone else out there with him. He stuck a knife to Tara’s throat and I didn’t know what else to do.”
Sharon’s eyes widened. “You felt safe taking a shot while he had a knife to Tara’s throat?”
“Under the circumstances, yes. If I hadn’t killed him, he’d have taken her. You saw the note. We’d have been at their mercy. She’d have been at their mercy. I couldn’t let that happen.”
“I understand. I probably would have done the same thing.” Shifting to more practical matters, she asked, “What are we going to do about the body?”
Lloyd shrugged. “Leave it. In this heat, nature will take care of it in no time. Crows and coyotes will strip it and scatter the bones. Insects will eat the rest. It’ll be gone in a few weeks.”
“We don’t have a few weeks,” Sharon spat. “What are we going to do when his mother comes down here looking for him?”
The words that came out of Lloyd’s mouth almost surprised him. He didn’t even realize he had a plan until he was stating it to Sharon. Then he couldn’t believe what he was saying. The words were more suited to have come out of Jim’s mouth than his. “I’m not giving her the opportunity to come here and ask questions. She’s probably sitting at home waiting for her son right now, expecting him to come back with a child. I’m going to visit her.”
The Borrowed World Series | Book 8 | Blood & Banjos Page 36
