The Hunt Club_ A Novel - Bret Lott [63]
“Our condolences,” Unc said, and took my arm.
What was left?
We’d driven the whole afternoon, like all we’d had to do was run these errands, like we’d just gone to drop off some overdue videos or picked up some TV dinners. And now we were in the trailer, Mom’s Stanza still out front, Unc and me waiting.
We’d stopped at the Pantry on 17 almost to Red Top, where Unc climbed out, called Miss Dinah at the open-air pay phone set up in the parking lot. The sky was black by then, the Pantry lit up bright as the Amoco station’d been just last night, and from the cab of the Luv I watched Unc punch at the numbers, watched him talk, his head down, chin to his chest. Then he’d hung up, climbed in, said, “Missy Dorcas got nothing. Still no news on who the sender was of those orders to void Charlie Simons.” He shrugged. “But she’s still trying.” He gave a small smile. “And she says to tell you she’s praying for your momma.”
But I didn’t smile, only put it into gear, pulled out onto 17.
And the only thing we could show for this whole day was that we knew some things.
Deputy Yandle had been disowned. The University Medical Consortium was after buying Hungry Neck to make it another Hilton Head. Goods were involved somehow.
Constance Dupree Simons had given her mother a sweetgrass paperweight.
Aunt Sarah had killed herself.
And my mom had been kidnapped.
It was cold in the front room, the windows broken out, Unc and me sitting on the sofa I’d tackled him on what seemed a year ago. If it had happened at all.
Then I pulled out the Polaroid of Mom from my back pocket.
Fifteen minutes until nine o’clock.
“None of what I’ve got you into is worth this,” Unc said. “The land.”
I didn’t move, only took in Mom’s face, her eyes. “This is over,” he said. “And it’s not what I’d hoped, Huger.” He tried at a smile. “This land. It was for you. Yours.” He put out his hand, touched my shoulder again. “This is what family we got. You, Eugenie, me. It’s all we got. Not much of a family, I know. Screwed to pieces. But it’s all we got.” He let go, slowly shook his head. “Not what I hoped, Huger. Selling this place.”
So it was over. Just like that: sell the land. That was all. And we’d have Mom back like some sort of collateral against a loan. If they played by their own rules. And then we’d all go home.
But somebody had killed Charles Middleton Simons.
Pigboy and Fatback?
Yandle and Thigpen?
And they’d let us go on home?
Then it came to me, the stupid truth of all this too big and dumb for me to keep track of: nobody knew Constance Dupree Simons had come to me, there in the hospital.
And nobody knew she’d told me she didn’t do it.
Unc sat up on the couch, back straight, head turned just barely away from me. “What time is it?”
I looked from the picture to him. “Unc,” I said, “they don’t know she came to see me. Constance.”
“I said what time is it,” he snapped, and moved his head one way, the other, his eyes to the window.
I looked at my watch. “Ten till. Unc, what’s wrong?”
“It’s Patrick and Reynold coming up. Reynold’s pickup.” He paused. “Son of a bitch. Hell of a time for them two boys to pay a visit.”
Then I heard it, in the same moment saw headlights play through the curtains.
Patrick and Reynold. What did they want? Last time I’d seen them was Saturday morning, when they’d torn off with the dogs and horses, and I thought of that rebel yell, the smell of beer on them before daylight. Patrick, with his filthy ponytail, Reynold’s bald head lit with the green light of the dashboard.
And there we’d been, all those members holding on to the dogs so’s they wouldn’t take in to the body.
Patrick and Reynold. They’d never come back for their dogs. At least not before I’d fallen, hit my head. Forty-five minutes to an hour after they let those dogs loose, when usually there they were on horseback not fifteen minutes behind the dogs.
Patrick and Reynold.
Their engine cut off, and Unc stood, moved for the door.
“Patrick?” he