Matt Lennox - The Carpenter

Lee was cold and stiff. The passenger door was open. The sun had not risen but the sky had lightened. Speedy was shaking him awake. He was stepping foot to foot, agitated, prodding the air with his 9mm.

Lee shot his hand forward and grabbed Speedy’s wrist: What the fuck is wrong with you?

— Lee.

— Is the airplane here?

— Lee.

He let go of Speedy’s wrist and pushed the man away. He said: Quit waving that fucking gun in my face.

— They got somebody here.

— They got what?

— Somebody here. Oh, man.

— A cop?

— Not a cop. They got a kid.

— A kid, said Lee.

He hopped down from the van.

— Just come and see, said Speedy. Oh, man. Arlene doesn’t know nothing about it. She’s still in the camper and Gilmore says-

Lee pushed past him. The equation was falling just short of a complete picture.

— Where is this kid?

— In the locker. Maurice was looking around, like keeping an eye open, and he finds this kid over by the trees …

They went into the shed, Lee leading. He crossed to the locker and pulled the door open. Gilmore was there. Maurice was a little deeper in, crouched down.

In the back corner of the locker they had him laid out on the floor, bound with duct tape around the ankles and wrists. Maurice reached out with the shotgun to prod the kid’s ribs. The kid had a strip of duct tape over his mouth. His nose had been badly broken and was leaning sideways and both eyes were blackened and the top of his forehead had been split open, wide enough to show a pink slip of bone beneath. His face was curtained with blood.

When Maurice prodded him he shuddered. Maurice stood up. He said: Yeah, still ticking.

— What is this? said Lee.

Gilmore and Maurice turned back to look at him and Speedy. The expression on Gilmore’s face was hard to interpret. Maybe vague distaste.

How could this be? How could he be here?

— What does it look like? said Maurice. While you thought you’d get yourself some goddamn sleep I went to watch our backs. And look what I found. Look what the fuck I found.

Lee worked moisture into his mouth: He doesn’t look like nobody I know. Who is he?

— He’s Peter, said Gilmore.

— Peter.

Gilmore pointed at the name embroidered on Pete’s jacket.

— He didn’t have a wallet on him, said Speedy.

— Peter, said Lee.

He saw Pete’s eyes rolling in their purpled swells. The blood vessels of one cornea had all burst.

— Did he tell you anything? said Speedy.

— No, said Maurice. He doesn’t have anything to say at all. Maybe you should get your torch going.

The eyes rolled.

— He’s nobody I know, said Lee, and they looked at him.

He stepped backwards out of the locker. The other men resumed talking. Lee went across the floor to the tool bag and opened it and dug through it and came out with an eight-pound sledgehammer. He carried it mid-shaft in one hand and he went back into the locker. He shouldered his way between Speedy and Gilmore. He heard his name spoken. He pushed past Maurice and he stood above the kid.

— Lee, said Maurice.

Lee laid the sledgehammer over his shoulder and he leaned down. He tore the strip of tape off the boy’s mouth. He heard him suck in breath. Two of his teeth were missing.

From beside him Lee could see Maurice taking a step backwards. He had the shotgun at his hip and was not quite pointing it and he was looking to Gilmore.

— You’re nobody I know, said Lee.

He straightened up. He put both hands on the shaft of the sledgehammer. The cords in his arms drew tight. Through his gloves he could feel the wood grain in the hickory.

— You’re nobody at all.

Lee brought the sledgehammer down. It moved with all the motion his arms could put to it, with its own weight carrying it. The steel head crashed into the frozen dirt six inches from Pete’s skull. Fragments of earth cascaded into his face. He had his eyes and mouth squeezed shut. When Lee lifted the hammer, a grey dent was left where it had struck.

He turned around.

Speedy’s hands were pressed against the sides of his head. Maurice was pointing the shotgun at Lee but he’d not yet pumped the action. He was looking from Lee to Gilmore and back to Lee. Gilmore himself was unreadable.

Lee went out of the locker. He threw the sledgehammer away from him. It hit the ground and bounced and came to rest. He could hear Gilmore speaking to Maurice:

— … your kind of shit to deal with. You figure out what this little sack of shit thinks he saw. And then you figure out what you want to do with him. The plane will be here in an hour. And nobody says a word, a fucking word, to Arlene.

Gilmore came out of the locker and crossed through the shed. He slowed as he passed Lee and the two of them looked at each other and neither said anything, and then Gilmore went back outside into the gathering daylight.

The locker door was partially ajar but all Lee could see through the opening was Speedy’s back.

The business card he’d taken from his wallet was yellowed with age. It showed a cartoon man in coveralls holding an oversized wrench, and behind the man was a woodstove with two white eyes and a smiling row of teeth. Gunter’s Maintenance amp; Restoration-All Makes. There was a phone number and a concession address in Novar. He turned the card over and read a different phone number handwritten on the back. He was in the store, holding the cold receiver of the pay telephone to his mouth.

The man on the other end of the line had not spoken for a long moment.

— Do you understand? said Lee. If I call the bulls and they come with all their lights and sirens and all that shit, then these boys will kill him. If you don’t understand the rest of it then you have to understand that.

— I understand.

— Then …

— Yes. It’s a ways from me. I’ll need twenty minutes.

Lee closed his eyes.

— I’ll see you.

He hung up. He breathed slowly. He walked a lap around the interior of the restaurant. He opened the rusty tool box he’d seen the night before. The box contained wiring tools: a cable ripper, a selection of marrettes, screwdrivers, needle-nose pliers.

On one of the stripped grocery shelves he found an old pack of cigarettes. There was one cigarette in the pack. It was stale and dry and the smoke moved briskly through it when he lit it. He looked back at the telephone.

There was what might have been an office through a door past the round-top fridge. The smell of mouse shit was sharp. One window in the office was unboarded, and Lee looked out on the white stillness of the property. The rising sun was slanting crosswise through the spruce. He could not see the shed or the campers from here. He opened his wallet again and looked at what little remained. One thing was his parole officer’s card. He balled the card up and threw it in the corner. Wade Larkin hadn’t ever been much use in the first place.

Lee drew on his cigarette.

He came back out of the empty office and went towards the tool box on the table. That was when he heard boots behind him. Maurice was standing in the opening between the rear storeroom and the restaurant. The shotgun was laid over his shoulder.

— What are you doing, Lee?

— I came down here to warm up.

— To warm up. What are you doing with that tool box?

Lee went past him into the rear storeroom. Over his shoulder, he said: The heater in the van is broken.

He took two steps and then he started to run for the back door. Maurice swung the shotgun by the barrel and the butt hit Lee in the back of the head. He pitched hard onto the concrete floor. The tool box crashed open in front of him and the wiring tools and marrettes scattered out.