Max Collins - Blood and Thunder

One step at a time, I tested the water, to find the land beneath. I saw something sliding along the water’s surface, about ten feet away; I froze. Waited. Then, whether harmless or poisonous, the serpent had passed, and I had this hellish Eden to myself again. Another step, and another, over one ankle, one more, another, to my knees, and then I was up on the roots of the biggest cypress in Louisiana.

I knew the direction I’d come, so I got behind the tree, figuring I could peek around and watch for McCracken, and in the meantime try to work the rope on the bark of the cypress. I had already twisted my fingers around to check the knot; it was hopelessly tight. It might take a while, but eventually the rope would wear through.

As I worked the ropes against the rough bark, I heard the rustle of fronds as he moved through. I had hoped that spongy ground would swallow up my footprints, but even so, maybe he could track me by broken branches and tramped-down foliage. I hadn’t been too careful; I’d just been moving.

I peered around. He was standing at the edge where the marshy land gave way to water and the ghost cypress forest began. He wasn’t twenty feet away.

“Heller!” he called, voice echoing across the water. “Give it up. You gon’ die out here!”

A bird called a mocking cry by way of response.

“Look-I believe ya…you were bluffin’. There ain’t no bullets. Me, I made an honest mistake. I’ll put my gun away, if you call out to me. I swear it on my mama’s grave!”

Not even a bird answered him this time.

“Heller! They done rushed Bucky Boy to the hospital! No harm done. He’s gon’ be jus’ fine. No hard feelin’s. We all took a beatin’ on this one. Come on, boy!”

He wouldn’t step out into that water. He wasn’t sure I was out here. All I had to do was wait him out. I already had a sense, from what Carlos said, and from McCracken himself, that McCracken was acting on his own accord. There’d be no reinforcements. All I had to do was wait him out. Something nudged me, and I turned quickly and the snout of a dull gray alligator, a creature easily eight feet long, was right beside me.

I lost my balance and fell back splatteringly into the water, arms waving. I was on my ass, knees up, and the view through them was the gator looking at me with its beady eyes, considering whether I was worth the trouble.

“Heller!” McCracken called, almost cackling. “Got ya now!”

He came running, and hit a deep spot, which made him lose his footing, sending him splat, face first into the water, and his gun went flying and splashed into the swamp, only a few feet away, gone forever. The fuss was too much for the gator, who slithered away, but I had to make the best of it.

Maybe my hands were bound behind me, but McCracken was unarmed now, and I kicked up water as I ran toward him and as he was just getting back on his feet, I played bull and rammed my head into his belly, sending him back down, throwing water everywhere. But when I went to kick him in the head, he reached up and grabbed my foot and threw me backward, with considerable force, and I slammed into a cypress and got the wind knocked out of me.

I slumped there, gasping for breath, beyond pain, as the dripping McCracken, his battered fighter’s face twisted into a smile as grotesque as the most gnarled, twisted branch in this gruesome landscape, staggered toward me, each footstep splashing. He was reaching into his pocket for something.

His hand came back and he flipped the razor open and its blade caught the sun streaking through the hanging moss.

“Maybe them bullets are inside’a you,” he said. “We gon’ have a look-see….”

I tried to stand, but I couldn’t get my footing on the knobby cypress roots, my hands still roped behind me.

His throat exploded in a blossom of blood as something thunked into the tree trunk, above me. He dropped the razor and it plinked into the water, as he clawed with both hands toward his throat, but blood was billowing out and he staggered a few more steps and fell face down at my feet, turning the swamp water around him a spreading red.

At the edge of the swamp, where the water began, Murphy Roden was standing, expressionless, a heavy revolver in his fist, trailing smoke.

“Nate! You alive, kid?”

“And kicking,” I said, or maybe I just thought it.

Either way, I passed out.

The shades were drawn, but morning sun peeked around the edges and threw streaks of sunlight on my face, prying my eyes open.

I was in my underwear, in bed, a comfortable bed, or as comfortable as any bed can be when your body is covered with welts and bruises. At least my head wasn’t aching. My watch was on the nightstand: 8:10. Nice to know. Now, what day was it?

The bedroom I recognized: Alice Jean’s, in the Beauregard Town bungalow. Pink stucco walls and a five-piece art moderne waterfall bedroom set with contrasting grains of walnut veneer creating angular designs, like the shooting pains in my arms and legs whenever I tried to move.

I couldn’t get back to sleep. The sun was in my face and turning over would have been agony; so I just lay there, moving only enough so that the strip of sunlight at least fell between my eyes. Lay there and felt sorry for myself.

And thought.

And fitted pieces together, like those contrasting wood veneers that formed the pattern of Alice Jean’s bedroom set.

I had breakfast in bed about an hour later. Alice Jean looked in on me, noticed I was awake, informed me it was Monday morning, and asked me if I thought I could eat. I said yes, and scrambled eggs and toast and orange juice went down surprisingly well. Of course, she was spoon-feeding me off a tray, a buxom angel of a nurse in an appropriately white frock with blue trimming.

After the meal, she took the dishes down and came back with another tray bearing a cup of coffee with cream and sugar on the side. I took it black. It went better with my bruises that way.

I said, “How’d I get here?”

She was sitting on the edge of the bed. “Murphy Roden brought you. He thought you needed looking after, and figured I’d be willing to do it.”

“Wouldn’t do for me to show up in a hospital.”

She frowned. “Why? What the hell happened to you, anyway?” Then she seemed embarrassed, blurting out what she’d been dying to ask. “You don’t have to talk about it. You don’t have to talk at all. Just get feeling better.”

“I feel fine. I feel like goddamn Fred Astaire. All I lack is the top hat and tails.”

“Settle down, now….”

I tried to sit up a little. “I need to make a phone call. Not right away, but before tomorrow.”

“I can make it for you.”

“No you can’t. It’s to Mrs. Long.”

She lowered her gaze. “You should try to sleep some more.”

“Okay. Can you get that sun out of my face?”

“Sure,” she said, and got up and adjusted the shade.

I closed my eyes.

I opened my eyes.

She was leaning over me, to see if I was sleeping, which I had been, but I’d sensed her, and woken; and now her lovely, heart-shaped face, framed by those dark flapper curls, was before me, a vision of concern.

“You have a visitor,” she said.

“Murphy?”

“Yes.”

Figured.

I said, “Prop an extra pillow behind me, would you?”

“Are you sure…?”

“Yeah.”

I allowed her to push me forward enough to slide another pillow under me; it didn’t hurt any worse than falling down a couple flights of stairs. But I wanted to be in a sitting-up position.

“Now send him up.”

She nodded and went off, and a few moments later, Murphy, in a white linen suit, peeked in. He took off his Panama fedora and smiled, a little.