Люциус Шепард - The Best of Lucius Shepard

Sleep wouldn’t take me. I got dressed and padded down the hall to visit Rickey. He was in his chair, scratching himself, watching the local news with the sound low. He gave a disinterested, Hey, and paid me no mind as I drew up a chair.

—You get laid? I asked.

—Damn! Did I! That woman’s got some evil fucking ways!

Rickey didn’t look much different for the experience and I thought the last shriveled-up scrap of soul must have been sucked out before Ava got to him.

He craned his neck to see me. How long y’all staying?

—Day or two. Why, you wanna go again with her?

—She promises not to kill me.

—Better ask for the pony ride next time.

Rickey coughed out a laugh and spat into the garbage alongside his chair. He spaced out on the TV and I couldn’t think of anything more to say. Rickey wasn’t much of a talker but he enjoyed people with him when he watched his programs. I knew if I didn’t hang out a while, he’d feel he wasn’t being respected, so I sat there dead-headed, peering at his mess. Must have been every kind of candy wrapper in the world scattered around that floor. It was like investigating a cave where some sick animal had puked up a month of bad meals. The next time I glanced toward the TV, I saw a blonde woman in a pants suit with her microphone stuck in the face of the gray-haired reverend I’d manhandled back in Ocala. I told Rickey to hit the volume, and when he was slow to act, I grabbed the remote and did it myself. The reverend shook his head mournfully and said, There was so much confusion, I don’t know which one actually fired. It was the skinny one I saw holding the gun, but that’s after the shooting. All I can tell you for certain is I heard somebody shout, Hands up! Who wants to die? And then I heard the shots.

—Hands up! Who wants to die? The blonde reporter acquired a serious look as the camera went to a close-up on her. Vikay Choudhoury responded to that challenge with a hero’s answer and now he lies dead. She paused for effect and said, This is Gloria Renard. Channel Twelve—

I thumbed the mute button. There was a cold spread of panic inside me, like I was standing on the edge of a cliff and had just lost my balance.

—You get on outa here, Maceo! Rickey stared at me through the straggles of his hair. I mean right fucking now!

—I didn’t kill nobody, I said.

—I don’t care you did or you didn’t. Every damn cop in Volusia knows who it is says that dumb fucking hands-up-who-wants-to-die bullshit. You think they won’t be snooping ‘round here? Wonder is, they ain’t here already.

—We can’t leave now. They be on us ‘fore we get clear the driveway.

Rickey reached down beside his hip and produced his pistol. I’ll shoot you my own self, you don’t get on out.

Anger was a cold snake snapping out of me. I ripped the gun from his hand, then I stood and began punching him. He tried to block the first couple with his forearms, but each one was a lesson I’d been taught to deliver, a preachment of old pain. The blows drove him lower in the chair until his butt was hanging half off the seat and his head was jammed into the join of the cushions and there was blood in his eyes. I couldn’t have said why, but the sight of him unconscious jabbed another red-hot stick into my brain. I smashed the pistol against the wall again and again. The trigger guard fell off and the cylinder popped out from the housing and I threw the rest to the floor. I knew Rickey was right about the cops. Maybe that was what set me off. That and recognizing how good a look at my face I’d given everybody in the Hojos. When God invented the notion of crazy trumping common sense, He must’ve had me in mind for the standard model. Everything considered, it was a goddamn miracle I’d come this far in life.

The storm lived around us. Seemed the lodge was a battery discharging thunder cracks and splintered lightning that made stretches of churning marsh grass bloom for unholy seconds against the dark gulf of land and sky. I told Leeli about Rickey and the reverend and the cops and tried once again to persuade her to leave with me. She wouldn’t budge. Mexico, she kept saying, was the way to go. I didn’t put up all that much of an argument, having no better choice to offer. We brought Ava and Carl into the conversation, leaving Squire asleep, and stood on the porch in the flickering light and hashed things out. The storm appeared to frighten Carl. He sat in one of the rotted porch chairs, his hands to his ears, rocking his upper body.

Leeli said she knew of a little rural airport west of New Smyrna where we could charter a plane, no questions, and Ava said she and Carl and Leeli would use Rickey’s car and take care of it right away.

—Like hell! I said. We’ll go together.

—You crazy? You know how it is when there’s a big storm, Ava said. Accidents and drownings. Cops’ll be all over the highway. There’ll be roadblocks. They see you, we’re finished.

—That’s right! Leeli said. They gonna be too busy to worry ’bout looking for us now.

—I’ll be damned I’m gonna let you run off without me, I said.

—We can’t run off! Won’t nothing be flying ’til the storm blows out. But we set things up, we can fly soon as it does.

—Just you go then, I said to Ava.

—I can’t leave Carl. You see how he is. And I need Leeli to point the way.

A pitchfork of lightning ripped away the dark and the thunder had a metallic sound, like somebody was pounding out a dent in the sky. Wind shivered the lodge and slammed loose boards.

—Naw, I said. Leeli can give you directions.

—What if I get ’em wrong? You got Squire here. Ain’t that enough of a guarantee?

I couldn’t see Ava’s face in that moment, but I thought I felt slyness steaming off of her. Tell her the directions, Leeli, I said.

—All those country roads. Leeli put a hand to her brow like a mentalist trying to make contact. I can show her, but I don’t know I can tell her.

Rain drove in through the screen and we all moved back from it except for Carl, who just sat there rocking.

—I don’t trust you no more’n you trust me, I said to Ava. We gonna have to work something else out.

Another lightning flash brought leached colors to the porch and fitted a long shadow beneath every object. Things looked to be tilted, as if the wind had knocked the lodge askew.

—Hang on, Ava said, and went off toward her bedroom.

Leeli caught my hand and said something I didn’t catch, but had the sound of an assurance, and then Ava came back out onto the porch and handed me a thick envelope.

—Fuck’s this? I asked.

—The rest of the money I promised Leeli. You can hold it while we’re gone.

Leeli’s eyes got stuck on the envelope as I inspected the contents. Hundred dollar bills and plenty of them.

—That guarantee enough for ya? Ava asked. ‘Tween Squire and the money, it’s ’bout the best I can do.

I stuffed the envelope into my hip pocket. Leeli unstuck her eyes. I could see it was a strain for her and that she didn’t love the idea of leaving the envelope behind. All right, I said. I started to deliver a warning, to pose consequences, but there didn’t seem much point to it. We all knew the lay of the land.

—All right, I repeated. Let’s get it rolling.

You know how it goes. Sometimes you’re so deep in the world, so mired in its trouble, you forget that you were born, you forget you were raised to be a dead man, you think you got where you’re standing all on your own and that you’re holding destiny in your hands, and when somebody passes you a golden ticket that’s stamped Freedom or Foreverafter, you don’t check to see if the ink’s dry or if there’s printing on the back, because you’re walking the road your daddy cut for you and stepping along in clothes your mama sewed, because it’s the tendency of your kind to believe the lottery can be won, great prizes are within your grasp, and though the only winning ticket ever came your parents’ way was an error in their favor made by a bartender or a grocery clerk, though you understand you’re their homemade fool, you just can’t accept that the rules of their life apply to you. That golden ticket is a guarantee all right, a twenty-four karat guaranteed loser. You know this in your heart, but you hang onto the bitch like it was a pass through the Gates of Glory or a voucher for an all-expenses-paid weekend at Casino World on the Redneck Riviera, whichever premium you prefer.