Christopher Rice - The Vines

“A trade,” she whispers.

“So… who did it?”

The three men have been standing inside the ruins of Fort Polk for a few minutes before Kyle Austin decides to break the silence between them. But the joke—if it could be called that—goes over like one of those old Lucky Dog stands in a hurricane, and then the three of them are armored in silence again.

Wind ripples across the still, swampy waters surrounding the decimated fort where they’ve chosen to meet for the first time in five years, and the crumbling brick walls give way to a night sky laced with low, fast-moving clouds. They’re all staring down at the electric lantern on the dirt floor between them. Scott Fauchier brought the thing, and he’s tried moving it around a few times but it’s no use—every possible angle makes them look like Halloween ghouls.

“Not funny,” Scott finally says. “Think about it. We’ve got no motive.”

“Says who?” Mike Simmons asks, and Kyle marvels at how the man’s solid teenage brawn has given way to layers of fat that rival Paul Prudhomme’s. Suddenly he’s imagining Simmons, former football team captain, barking orders at people while he zips around the carpeted offices of his little daddy-financed brokerage firm on one of those fat-people scooters, and he has to bury a laugh in the side of one fist.

Scott Fauchier, on the other hand, is just as tanned and pretty as he ever was, and he still has a tendency to bat his long golden eyelashes at the rest of them like a cheerleader in search of a date to homecoming. The three men haven’t spoken much of their own volition, not since Troy Mangier tightened the noose around them when they were teenagers. But Fauchier’s pretty mug has been impossible to miss. He’s the poster boy for his own line of health clubs, which means he startles the hell out of Kyle at least once a week by popping up on the sidewall of a bus stop on Veterans Boulevard, shirtless and beaming and holding a folded jump rope over one shoulder as if it were hitched to a wagon full of old tires he was dragging without breaking a sweat.

“We stopped,” Scott says. “The whole thing… he called it off as soon as he became Mrs. Chaisson. I mean, unless he made you guys keep paying. But the last time I—”

“You know, she’s actually a pretty nice lady,” Kyle interjects.

“Shut up, dude,” Simmons growls. “Seriously.”

“No, really. Katie was one of her maids when she was queen of Rex, and said she didn’t let any of it go to her head. Said she was real sweet to every—”

“Will you shut up , Kyle?” Scott Fauchier says in a pleading tone that makes him sound like a teenager again.

But Kyle has already clamped his mouth shut. Not because of Scott’s whiny request, but because just mentioning his wife’s name in this secret spot feels like a dark violation. Like leaving her photograph up on the nightstand while boning a hooker in their bed. Which is not something he’s ever done specifically, but he’s done plenty else in his life. Otherwise he wouldn’t be here in the hot, windy dark, one of three former high school heroes turned bitter, drunken slaves to their guilt.

When Scott Fauchier nervously licks his full lips, Kyle is seized by a jarring, nightmarish image inspired by a faggy prank e-mail one of his nurses sent him once, only now big fat Mike Simmons is the whip-toting, leather-clad freak in the bondage hood and full-lipped Scott Fauchier is the hairless, jockstrap-clad piece of oiled-up flesh, hog-tied at his combat boots. Amazing how badly the e-mail had gotten to him that day—he’d practically fired poor Lenny Jorgensen for sending it, which scared Lenny half to death. They sent joke e-mails around his veterinary practice all the time, mostly Photoshop jobs of Michelle Obama done up like some big-titted African villager. But never any kind of gay shit.

Never anything that made Kyle see John Fuller tied to the foot of that electrical tower again.

“Bitch is out of her mind,” Fauchier continues. “That kinda money, it drives a person crazy. Just ask Simmons.”

“Or lick my balls,” Simmons snaps.

“No, seriously. I heard Henderson finally cut the cord and she’s been like a shut-in ever since…”

Scott Fauchier realizes his mistake too late. He broke a cardinal rule; he said Blake Henderson’s name aloud.

Now all three of them are remembering the way the kid sobbed and begged, not for his life but for John Fuller’s. They’re remembering how after they put the two men atop the concrete foot of one of the electrical towers and tied them back-to-back on either side of one of the tower’s spindly metal legs, Blake Henderson started shaking his wrists violently. They’re remembering how at first they thought he was trying to get free, and then they realized he was trying to shake life back into Fuller, who’d gone stone-cold after Simmons delivered the first, too-strong (un- fucking -necessary, if you asked Kyle Austin) blow from a lead pipe that was just supposed to be for show.

“My point is, it’s been done, fellas,” Scott says, his voice rendered a ragged near whisper by the force of memory. “It’s been done for years. He didn’t need our money anymore. Last payment was… when?”

“Five years, for me,” Kyle says, even though he’d rather keep quiet now and watch the other guys slug it out, which has always been his way.

“Me too,” Simmons grumbles.

“And me three,” Scott whines. “So seriously… can we go now?”

“Yeah. That’s it. We should just go,” says Simmons, the one who had called them together, the man who, if you asked Kyle Austin, was ultimately responsible for everything going straight to hell that night. “The man who’s got video of us leaving the scene of John Fuller’s murder is either missing or dead, and we’ve got no idea who else has seen the film or where any of the copies are. But you’re right, Fauchier. We should just take a fuckin’ wait-and-see approach. Just let the chips fall—”

“All right, man. Chill. I didn’t—”

“—where they fucking may. Or maybe we could just all act like the fucking feather from Forrest Gump , you know? Just drifting here and there and seeing which way the wind takes us.”

“He’s got a good point, though,” Kyle says.

“Really? ’Cause I haven’t fucking heard it.”

“Five years, Simmons.”

“And he could have started it right up again at any time. That greasy fuck had pussy up and down the Gulf Coast. It was just a matter of time before he got his dick snagged in one and Chaisson kicked him to the curb. This wasn’t fixed , gentlemen. This wasn’t resolved . We were never off the hook even after he stopped making us pay, and don’t either of you forget it. Acting like we were… well, it’s a little fucking reckless.”

“Fine,” Kyle relents. “Then what do we do?”

“Wait and see if Mangier was actually murdered?” Fauchier tries, feeling like it’s his job to calm Simmons, given that it was his rush to get out of there that made him blow in the first place. “How’s that sound?”

“Like shit,” Simmons mutters. “That’s how it sounds.”

“OK, then… what?” Kyle asks again.

“Doesn’t matter whether Mangier’s dead or alive. One person’s still around. And we need to know if she’s seen the tape.”

“Or if she knows where it is,” Kyle says, nodding.

“Caitlin Chaisson?” Scott Fauchier asks, astonished. “You actually think she’s part of this.”

“What I think is that we need to watch her very fucking closely,” Simmons whispers. “That’s what I think.”

“And how are we going to do that?” Kyle asks. And that’s when his old friend looks at him with a level stare. The up-lighting from the lantern at their feet transforms the man’s eyes into floating orbs guarding the entrance to deep, dark caverns in his skull.