Tom Piccirilli - November Mourns

The Plexiglas canister opened and the rattlers came pouring out in heaps, twining and slithering among each other, spreading across the floor.

They uncoiled and several flowed directly for Shad as if they’d always hated him.

Hart lifted the rifle, took a step forward, and swung it around.

Gabriel shouted, “No!”

So, Shad thought, here it is again.

They had called him a jonah in the slam because violence circled him without ever quite touching down on his shoulder. Instead, it would miss him and hit somebody else close by.

The rifle blast struck Rebi in the left side of the chest. A broken cry that almost sounded like Shad’s name erupted from her mouth. Blood and viscera washed across his neck in a wave of warm brutality. Wet hair whisked across his face as she flopped sideways into his arms, slid from him, and draped dead over the bed.

Every man wanted to be a hero for a woman, even when it was too late. It gave him a reason to stand tall. The rage made him roar. Snakes hissed and lunged. Two bit into Shad’s boots and hung on. Hart and Howell Wegg, still without expression, continued to stare. The woman in the house screamed again.

Shad caught Lucas Gabriel’s eye and the moment lengthened further than it ever should have. He fought back a twinge, gave a huff that wasn’t quite a sigh as Gabriel, with great remorse, grimaced and started to lift his gun. The rattlers rose and closed in, slithering over Jerilyn’s body and blotting the smile from her lips.

The rifle swung. Shad crossed his arms over his face and went barreling out the mostly shut window, where Mags’s hand was waving to him.

IN THE FEDERAL PEN THE OLD MOB GUYS SUPPOSEDLY had 812 channels of cable and sat around watching porno movies and The Godfather trilogy all day long.

But on C-Block, the warden only let them have two hours of TV time in the afternoon. Nothing that might incite violence, suicide, depression, or sexual excitement-no action pictures, no Jerry Springer, no MTV, no Ah-nuld, not even Oprah. The Aryans used to lose their shit when the O was on, they’d start flinging their chairs, chase the homeboys down in the shower stalls. No O.

But every once in a while the TV guide would get their programming wrong and you could catch the last half hour of some trash hit. The ones about the regular guy pushed to his limits and having to get revenge on the criminals: the sadistic sheriff, the terrorists, his evil twin brother, his cheating wife who faked her own death and framed him for the murder. He’d cut loose and tape a hand grenade in some fucker’s mouth and toss off a quip while brains flew. He’d be bashed to hell by the end but still limping along saying funny shit, and if he heard a gun cock or a rocket launcher hum, he’d always be able to dive out of the way at the last second.

It looked easy in the flicks. The guy goes through a barroom window and the wood and glass just explode away in a shower of tiny bits like sugar candy. He does a cool diving roll, snaps onto his feet, and does a zig and a zag, breezing through the woods. Maybe one or two wild gunshots behind him, little puffs of smoke on the breeze. You couldn’t laugh too loudly or else the bulls would know somebody screwed up and there was something good on the tube.

Jeffie O’Rourke once looked at him while they watched five minutes of some seventies Southern sadism film, an innocent guy trying to escape from the chain gang. Jeffie said, “This is the only kind of movie where the hero dies or goes to prison for life but still manages to win something.”

“Win what?” Shad asked.

Like that, like a Greek chorus expounding on morality, like the Stage Manager in Our Town coming out to narrate the closing scene and put some polish on the whole thing. Maybe Jeffie had answered him, Shad couldn’t remember.

His nose poured blood and it felt like every muscle in his body had been stabbed with an awl. His forearms were covered with deep lacerations, and the briars tore at him as he came through the scrub. His face had been whipped by thistle branches and thorns still stuck out from his forehead and cheeks.

He ran.

It only took a minute before he was so turned around that he didn’t know what direction he was going. Gray clouds hung heavily in the sky and he couldn’t spot the sun. All he could see was the same smeared vermilion haze up there behind the ashen billowing stratus.

He tried not to put a sound track to it but couldn’t help himself. He heard the silly banjos and redneck mouth harps. The washboard slaps and scratches as he rolled down the embankments head over ass. The catclaws dug in deeper every second.

If he was heading back toward the ridge, all he had to do was make it across the trestle and back to his car. If he was heading farther south, he’d have to climb down the whole damn mountain before he got to the river. Maybe he could find one of the old logging or hogback trails that led to town. Otherwise, he’d either hit the cliffs or the bramble forest, both impassable.

Rebi’s blood dried slowly on him, and she glazed his tongue.

THE WOODS CONTINUED TO SOLIDIFY WITH OAK, ASH, stands of spruce and slash pine. Carpets of cedar, leaves, needles, and moss tore wide in his wake as he struggled to keep his feet. It was slippery as hell and he kept going down, tripping over concealed roots and logs. He sprawled on his face a couple of times and crawled past jagged tree trunks and broad-headed skinks.

He didn’t know how close the Wegg brothers were, but he knew they’d be coming.

Thickets swarmed around him, branches lurching in the breeze and swatting at his hair. Shad could hear the churning of water nearby and made for it.

Looking down, he saw that he’d picked up a dirt-filled beer bottle someplace and for some reason still held on to it. It felt important to keep it with him. You didn’t question your right hand at a time like this.

He slid down a muddy embankment and came to a creek that had become violently swollen with the rain. He had no idea if this was the same place where he’d first met Jerilyn and watched her pressing the onionskin pages into the stream, but he stared at the fast-moving brook and instantly hated it.

Okay, so now maybe he had a reason for the bottle. The ripped, worn label peeled off with almost no prodding. He used his filthy index finger to scrawl on the back of it

Who R U, Fucker?

He pressed the label into the bottle and threw it in the creek. Let the bastard read that, if he could. Wherever he was.

Shad crossed the brook and had just drifted behind some Catawba and dogwood when he heard the harsh clatter of tree limbs scraping back and forth against each other. Someone pushing through.

He went to his knees and hit the mat of spongy cedar, turned, and peered through the bushes.

So here came Hart and Howell Wegg-capable, efficient, and moving with deadly competence through the woods. Hart still had the rifle and Howell had stopped off to pick up his shotgun. They checked the ground for markings like they were tracking wild boar. Shad saw just how clear a trail he’d left behind him. Mauled chunks of ground, busted sticks, and bent saplings leading right to him.

Where did that leave Lucas Gabriel? The man might think Shad had killed Jerilyn, but he’d seen Rebi die at the hands of his own thugs. Would the entire settlement keep quiet about this? Would any of them go for the sheriff?

He kept thinking that a last-minute rescue from Dave Fox was about the best he could hope for.

The Weggs murmured to one another as they hunted, appearing casual and even aloof. Frigid-blooded sons of bitches. How could they have lived so close to the Gabriel girls and not fallen in love?