George Pelecanos - Right as Rain

Edna shoved the entire vial into the pocket of her jeans. Ray wouldn't be back for some time. She was going to mix a tall drink and take a walk out in those woods for real. Smoke up those rocks and have a party her own self. She deserved a little treat, the way Ray always left her hangin' like that, when she was doing her best to service him good.

Edna heard a door open from the front of the barn. She turned her head and stumbled back, her own reflection in the weight-lifting mirror giving her an awful startle. Looking down at the floor, she saw the carpet remnant beside the weight bench, not completely covering the trapdoor.

Edna heard boot steps clomping on the barroom floor. She had always been a quick thinker, her friend Johanna told her that all the time. She thought fast and decided. There wasn't but one thing to do.

Ray and Earl had only gotten a mile down the interstate when Ray told Earl they had to turn around and go back to the property.

'I forgot somethin',' said Ray.

'What, that speckled powder?' said Earl.

'It gives me an edge when I'm dealin' with those rugheads.'

'Go on back if you need it,' said Earl, lifting a Busch from the six-pack cooler at his feet. 'Me, everything I need, it comes from a bottle or a can.'

Ray U-turned the Taurus and headed back for the property.

Earl cracked his window, then rolled it down halfway. 'Weather turned yesterday.'

'It'll get cold again.'

'It stays like this, them greasers are gonna get ripe. You best put 'em deep, first chance you get.'

'Ground's still too hard, Daddy.'

'You better get to it, Critter.'

'I'll take care of it, Daddy.'

Ray took a deep breath, wondering if his father would ever stop tellin' him what to do.

Ray walked hard across the saloon floor, his fists balled tight. He needed to calm down, but how could he, havin' to take care of all these people, and his business, and on top of it all having to take a boatload of shit from his old man. He pulled his keys off his belt loop and fitted one to the lock on the back door.

The lock had already been turned. He reached for the knob. God damn, the door was already open.

'Edna,' said Ray, shaking his head, because he knew it had to be her had been back here; somehow she'd gotten hold of his key. There wasn't anyone else stupid enough to test him like that.

Ray went to the shelf and took down the spansules of crystal meth. He shoved the vial into a pocket of his jeans. He scanned the shelf: that other vial, the one held the ice, was gone. Edna was probably out in the woods, smokin' it all up at once, greedy bitch that she was. He knew she hadn't driven anywhere, as the F-150 was still parked in the yard.

Ray turned at the sound of the car horn. That would be his daddy, just landin' on it, tellin' him it was time to go.

Ray looked around the room. Somethin' wasn't right… Damn, there it was, too, the carpet remnant had been moved off the trapdoor. Must have been moved with all that activity they'd had back here with the Colombians, what with them all floppin' around and shit. Even so, thought Ray, as he moved the carpet aside and lifted the trapdoor, holding his breath against a familiar smell, it doesn't hurt to check.

He looked down the wooden ladder that led into the tunnel. The lights were on down there, but that didn't mean nothin', they worked off the master switch.

Earl landed on that horn again.

'All right!' yelled Ray, though he knew his daddy couldn't hear him.

Ray closed the trapdoor, placed the carpet remnant over it, and dragged the weight bench over a few feet. Now the weight bench sat atop the trapdoor.

Ray shut down the lights before he locked the door from the outside. He took no pleasure in hurting Edna. But he sure was gonna give her some when he came back home.

Edna wasn't scared, not really. Even when Ray had shut the lights down, because she never had been frightened of the dark. She sat on the cold dirt patiently, waiting to make sure Ray had gone away for good, and when she was satisfied, she kind of crawled around some until she found the ladder, and climbed up it to the trapdoor.

The door wouldn't budge. Ray had put somethin' over it. She wasn't surprised. She went back down the ladder and sat, gave herself some time to think.

She'd seen enough of the tunnel, when the lights had been on, to know that it went straight back fifty yards or so, then went off hard to the right. It was a narrow open shaft, and she'd have to go through it like a dog, on her hands and knees, but there wasn't nothin' tricky about it; it went back and cut right.

Edna had no doubt that Ray and Earl had rigged some kind of opening at the end of the tunnel, a way for them to escape into the woods from all those imaginary FBI and ATF boys they were always goin' on about. Even Ray, he wasn't dumb enough to go through all that trouble of diggin' a tunnel without providing for a back door.

There was the smell of expired animal down here. Ray said there was snakes in this tunnel, but she wasn't afraid of no snakes, either. She'd lost count of all the black snakes she'd killed with a hoe, growin' up out this way. Maybe there was rats. But rats weren't nothin' but overgrown mice. Somethin' had cacked down here, that was for certain, maybe one of those barn cats that were always hanging around. She knew that smell.

Anyway, if she lost her bearings or something, crawling around down here, she could use the disposable lighter she had in her pocket. She was glad she had brought it with her. And the drugs.

Edna had an awful headache. It seemed to be getting worse. She found the vial of ice and the lighter and the pipe, and she hit the lighter so that she could fill the pipe. A little pickup would motor her out of this place quick and just right.

She smoked the rocks, coughing furiously on the last hit, and let the flame go out. The buzz started to build. It was a pleasant buzz at first. Then it was violent and it left her shaking. She realized that maybe she had smoked too much. The space felt very close, and for the first time she was frightened, though she wasn't sure of what. She wanted to get out.

Edna put everything but the lighter back in her pockets. Her hands were trembling, and she couldn't do it fast enough. She thumbed the wheel of the lighter, looked ahead, and began to crawl.

She could hear her own breath as she crawled. She started to hum, thinking it would calm her, but it only scared her, and she stopped and crawled on. Her head pounded and it hurt something fierce. She crawled with sudden velocity and found good purchase on the hard earth.

'Shit!' she said, as her head hit a wall of dirt.

I am at the end of the straight shot now, she thought, and she scrabbled, turning right and finding more space. The smell had grown awful, and she gagged, but she crawled on. She was dizzy and she panicked at the thought that she might be running out of air.

She gagged again at the lousy stench, heard a kind of crunching sound, struggled to draw in breath as she kept on and touched something soft, and crawled over another thing that was cold and hard.

Edna raised the lighter in front of her and got flame. Two corpses covered in writhing maggots lay before her.

'Aaah!' screamed Edna. 'Oh, God, Ray, God, Ray, God!'

She turned, the lighter flipping out of her hand.

Edna fell forward onto her belly. She clawed at the cold earth. But she was too dizzy to move, and it seemed as if a hatchet had cleaved her skull. She vomited into the darkness of the tunnel and lowered her head to the ground, feeling the warmth of her own puke on her face. Her eyes were fixed and glassy, and her tongue slid from her open mouth.

'They're comin' out,' said Strange looking through the 500 millimeter lens of his AE-1.