by Scott Blade
Widow stopped when he came to something he had not seen before in a small place like this. It was another shop, but this one stuck out as different, as something unique in a small place.
It was a vape shop. These vape shops were steadily replacing the old cigar smoke shops that used to be more common. Vaping was a young industry, compared to all the other more established places. It might’ve even been invented in the twenty-first century. He wasn’t sure .
Out front, he saw a teal Dodge truck. It was old, but he saw no rust. It wasn’t pristine either. Mud and dirt were caked under the wheel wells and splashed across the bumper, which had a small dent in it.
Widow figured that the owner had been driving out on dirt roads this morning. Maybe the mud and dirt were direct results of the previous night’s rain.
Widow crossed the street over to that side and walked on the sidewalk.
An elderly couple, not ancient, but nearing the age of retirement and senior discounts, came out of the vape store. They weren’t arguing, but having a vocal discussion like old couples do.
The man said, “Dorothy, get off my back. I don’t know why they’re not here.”
“They’re not here ‘cause they were probably out drunk last night.”
“I’m here. So, let’s get these boxes in.”
“You can’t lift those boxes.”
The man ignored her and let the Dodge’s tailgate down. He bent slightly and tried to scoop up a single box out of the back of the truck.
He dropped it the moment after he lifted it.
Widow came up behind them.
“Can I help you guys with that?”
He helped the man out of the way.
“Do you guys want all three of these boxes inside?”
The woman named Dorothy said, “Yes. Thanks for helping us.”
“No problem. ”
Widow lifted the dropped box off the tailgate and stacked it on top of the next and then stacked those on top of the third. He lifted all three. Not too heavy, just bulky and hard to maneuver.
“Can you get all that?” Dorothy asked.
“Not a problem. Just guide me to where you need them.”
“This way,” she said.
Widow used his head to help prop them up, and he craned his neck like a turtle so that he could see around the side of the stack.
He followed her voice.
“Right this way,” she said.
She propped open a door for him. Then he heard an electric buzz from a bell. It was one of those that notified shopkeepers of someone opening their street door, an upgrade from the ancient bell at the marshal’s laundromat office.
He passed through the door, slowly, and followed Dorothy over to a spot near a glass countertop that displayed dozens of types of vape pens and cartridges and carrying cases and other knickknacks for collectors and vapers. Widow had no idea what most of them were or what they were for.
“Set it down there.”
Widow set the stack of boxes down on the countertop and backed away. Out of some kind of desire to be polite, he acted like the whole ordeal was taxing, which it wasn’t. It was an attempt to allow the man to save face and save pride in front of his wife, like the reason he couldn’t lift the boxes wasn’t that he was too old to be lifting heavy boxes, but it was that the boxes were very heavy. Any younger man would’ve had the same trouble lifting them.
Widow was different because he was a giant. Nature had given him a cheat code. How could her husband compete with that?
“Well, thank you, stranger,” Dorothy said.
“That was nice of you, mister,” the man said.
Widow nodded a polite nod and introduced himself.
“Widow. First name, Jack.”
He reached his hand out, offering a friendly handshake to the man first, and then to Dorothy.
“Bill, and this is my wife, Dorothy.”
“Nice to meet you both.”
They all shook hands.
“Can we do something for you?” Bill asked.
Dorothy said, “To thank you for helping us? Would you like a vape pen?”
The man turned and elbowed Dorothy in the arm, nothing hard, not anything close to spousal abuse. It was more of a lifetime affair.
Like he was saying, Hey, don’t give away the store!
“No, ma’am. Thanks for the offer, but I don’t vape. Don’t hardly understand the appeal of it.”
“It’s a cleaner, healthier alternative to smoking cigarettes.”
“So it helps you quit? I don’t need help quitting. I quit a long time ago.”
“No. It’s not for quitting,” Bill added .
“It does help, but vaping is its own thing. It’s not about quitting smoking. Although, that’s why half of our customers do it.”
“Either way, no thanks. I’ve got a vice already.”
The looked at him sideways for a moment.
“What vice do you have?” she asked.
“Coffee.”
Bill muttered, “Probably steroids.”
At which point, Widow saw another elbow thrown in this marriage, only this one was from Dorothy at Bill. It was hard and landed right in his side, under his right arm. He let out a gasp and grabbed at his side.
Widow imagined that over the course of their marriage, which he guessed to be in the double digits, year-wise, there had been many elbows thrown from each of them at the other. No innocent party there, guilt on both sides, like a longstanding family feud that no one could remember who started or why or over what, and just as trivial at this point.
The whole thing was now a family tradition.
Widow cracked a smile. Married life. He didn’t get it, but it was endearing.
Bill grabbed his side like it hurt, which it did. She had let him have it hard, much harder than he did to her.
“Are you sure you don’t want anything?” Dorothy repeated.
Widow thought for a moment and came back with his answer.
“I’m a sailor. Former sailor. ”
She stared at him, blankly.
“I was in the Navy. We dealt in intel. We can do that?”
The blank stare continued.
“We can trade information.”
She nodded.
“What kind of information do you need?”
“Two things only.”
She nodded again.
“The first is out of curiosity. How’s business for a vape store in a place like this?”
“Business is real good.”
“Really?”
Dorothy moved closer and leaned her back against the counter. Her sleeves jerked up on her shirt and Widow saw an old, faded tattoo. Couldn’t tell what it had been because the ink was long since touched up.
She put her hands up to her lips and cupped it around like she was blocking someone from lip-reading what she was about to say.
“Oh yeah. It’s better than more non-legal means of making money. Believe me. We got out of that game.”
She had said non-legal and not illegal like it was a way of covering up that she meant not legal.
Widow nodded along.
“Dorothy, don’t talk about that.”
“It’s okay. I’m not the law.”
Bill nodded.
“We know that. Hellbent’s only got one cop.”
Silence .
Widow wondered what the criminal industry that they had once been in was? Drugs were the obvious answer.
Dorothy said, “The vape business is very good out here because other than work and fishing and hunting, there’s not much left for people to do, except drink and smoke.
“Vape is a lot better option than other things people like to smoke.”
Drugs were the answer to what criminal activity they had once been in before.
Bill started to fidget like he was uncomfortable with his wife being so blasé about sharing this private family information with a total stranger. He interrupted.
“Mr. Wid
ow, what’s the other information you need?”
“I was told that Mable’s Diner had the best eggs in town.”
Bill nodded.
Dorothy said, “That’s not true.”
“It is so, Dorothy,” Bill said.
“It’s not. They’re the same exact eggs that everyone has. We all buy them from the same market, Bill.”
“Don’t pay attention to her. Mable’s has the best.”
Widow said, “I was told the scrambled eggs are great.”
“No, don’t get the scrambled. Get the New England omelet. That’s their best meal with eggs. ”
Widow nodded, recorded the information in his head.
“So, which way is it? I was told to keep heading this way.”
He pointed at the wall to his left.
“That’s right. Just keep going that way. You can’t miss it.”
After that, Widow thanked both Dorothy and Bill, in that order and they returned the pleasantries and thanked him for helping with the boxes.
He headed out the door back to his mission to find breakfast.
On the street, he stopped and saw two big Harley Davidsons riding in from the other direction.
Two huge boys rode on the back of them. They weren’t older than Widow. They were younger, not much younger, but they both looked ten years older. Widow’s guess was hard living, smoking meth, from what he was to understand from Wagner and Bridges, and now Bill and Dorothy.
The hogs they rode exhausted smoke and roared in a low, lion-like rumble. The motorcyclists rode up slowly. When they noticed him, they plowed ahead, fast.
They came up and passed the vape store, beyond the old, parked Dodge, and rode a little way past Widow. Then they both stopped up on a hill right in the intersection ahead of him. They circled around, each going the opposite direction. They exchanged positions and came back down toward him.
The two boys stopped alongside him in the road and rumbled the bikes louder and louder, like apes discovering an intruder in their jungle.
Widow didn’t know much about motorcycles. Being honest with himself, the only reason he knew these were Harley Davidsons was that the company had an iconic logo, which he saw on the bikes. But then he figured that these two biker wannabes could’ve just slapped Harley Davidson stickers on the fuel tanks.
Either way, the bikers stopped and turned their heads in his direction. One of them took a pair of Oakley sunglasses off his face, let them drop down to hang from a cord around his neck. The second biker followed suit but kept his sunglasses folded over a big, gloved hand.
“Hey, boy. You got a reason to be here?”
Boy? No one had called him boy since he was a boy.
“What business is that of yours?”
Widow stepped right and back, a foot away from the curb. The shadow from the top corner of the building behind him fell over his body and vision, allowing him to get a better look at the bikers’ faces.
He saw that they were related. Probably brothers, but maybe cousins.
What was it that Bridges and Wagner had told him? Local motorcycle clubs cook and sell meth. So, maybe these guys were a part of that motorcycle club. Perhaps, they were interested in him because of the way he looked, being an outsider, just like Wagner and Bridges had taken him.
Often Widow was mistaken for a criminal, more than he ever was as a cop. Which worked well for him, back then, but now it was getting tiresome.
The one that Widow guessed to be the older brother spoke.
“Boy, you playing smart? I’m asking you a question.”
Widow said, “I don’t answer to you. I don’t even have to talk to you if I don’t want to.”
“Is that so?”
“That’s so. In fact, if I choose, I could just cross this street and go on my way.”
The younger brother repeated basically the same question as his older brother.
“That right?”
“That’s right.”
The two brothers stared at him, calculating, processing, considering the right course of action to take.
Widow stepped left and forward, back into the light. He had already plotted his course. He was crossing the street, with or without putting these two in the dirt.
Just then, Bill and Dorothy stepped outside their store. Bill stopped at his truck until he saw what was happening on the street corner and then he started walking up the sidewalk toward Widow .
The two brothers stayed on their bikes and looked at Bill.
Bill stopped halfway to Widow and called out.
“What the hell are you boys doing?”
That’s when things changed completely.
The younger brother spoke first.
“We’re not doing anything, sir.”
The older one said, “We’re just checking up on this guy. He was loitering around the store.”
Widow noticed the guy had said the store and not your store like the store belonged to him just as much as it did to Bill and Dorothy. But then Widow noticed a particular change in status, a change in demeanor, a retreat of the apelike activity that they had been demonstrating. Now, he was looking at a different set of bikers threatening him. Now, he was looking at two timid, overgrown children.
And the younger one had said, sir.
They were Bill and Dorothy’s boys.
Bill spoke again.
“That’s Jack Widow, boys. He’s our friend. Now, let him cross.”
The bikers looked at Widow, slipped their Oakleys back on and backed off.
Dorothy came up to join her husband. She called out to the bikers.
“Lads, are you bothering Mr. Widow?”
Lads? Widow thought. Must be a pet name like Junior or Bubba.
“No, ma’am,” they said in unison .
She put two judgmental hands on her hips, a move that only a mother does when correcting her offspring.
The two bikers were Bill and Dorothy’s sons. No question.
Widow smiled and spoke.
“Guess, I’ll be on my way then, lads.”
Widow stepped off the curb, checked both ways, and crossed the street, ignoring the sons and moving on.
Chapter 8
H ELLBENT, whether it was meant to be a town, a city, a community, a commune, or just a spot on a map, was wholly misnamed. So far, it was the farthest thing from hell or any semblance of a demonic town.
To Widow, the place seemed like an ideal destination in the fall to watch the leaves and the foliage for city folks who were into that sort of thing.
Widow walked past a short row of tourist shops and streets with plenty of wooded areas until he saw a road called Ignominy Avenue, which was another unusual name. Ignominy was a word that described a type of shame or disgrace. It was like the avenue was named to show a black mark on Hellbent’s history.
Widow being Widow, he turned onto it and followed the street, which wound down into a residential area.
Charismatic, timeworn Victorian houses lined the block with picket fences and big trees. Leaves fluttered slowly like the opening shot of a movie. Cars lined the street, parked. Not one of them newer than ten years, but all of them well-kept as if they had just been purchased at a used car lot.
Widow thought about the directions given by the barber. According to his calculations, he could continue on Ignominy Avenue and stroll down one block, take a left and wind up at Mable’s Diner.
It was a gamble, but a scenic one. A better payoff. Widow walked casually down the street. He stepped off the sidewalk and strolled down the middle of the road, staying on the white line. He did this to get a broader view.
He walked on for ten more minutes until he saw the oddest thing. Right in the middle of Ignominy Avenue was a median, which was normal. But it was overgrown with grass and weeds and one lone tree. There was a section of it, in front of the tree, closed off by a short, rusted wrought iron fence. The iron plotted out a section of ground about ten feet by ten feet.
The thing that was
so odd about it was that at the center of the squared plot of land, surrounded by the wrought iron fence, under the tree, covered in the tree’s shadow, was an unmarked, forgotten grave.
Chapter 9
J UST OVER THE BRIM of a gully that was carved out centuries ago, one of Major’s guys, not Attack Dog, but one just as loyal, and just as deadly, but less than reliable, sat on his motorcycle like a cowboy would have sat on a horse’s saddle, more than a hundred years before.
Both of his legs were extended outward. He used them as side stands to brace the bike. The engine was on, idling and humming in a low grumble.
From his saddlebag, he pulled out a pair of field glasses. He stared through them at the police truck climbing the trail back to the cabin.
His job had been to return the next morning and scope it out. He was to make sure that everything was destroyed. That there was no evidence remaining. Dead, burned corpses were fine, but not left in the positions that they had left them in. He was to make sure the bones were dragged and piled inside where the cabin had been .
But he had messed up. He was supposed to be there first thing.
He hadn’t made the cabin his first stop. He had stopped at a roadside motel, a lonely thing that was located miles to the west, on the border of the county. He had already had a prior engagement with a prostitute there. A monthly engagement that he had to keep or lose his spot.
She was a nobody. Just a girl he had met one night in the next county over, at a bar. But he liked her. And it was his down time. Still, Major wouldn’t be happy with his sense of priority.
So, now what was he going to do?
He had messed up.
He had messed up because there was a truck driving to the cabin. And not just any truck. It was Hellbent’s marshal. And she wasn’t alone.
There was a trooper in the truck with her.
He put the field glasses back into his saddlebag. They sank down to the bottom from the weight. He moved them aside and drew out a Smith and Wesson 500 Magnum, loaded with Magnum rounds. It was an X-frame silver handgun, more commonly known as a hand cannon, and even more widely recognized as Dirty Harry’s hand cannon.
