The Hunt Club_ A Novel - Bret Lott [64]
“Leland?” Patrick called out. “You okay? What’s with your windows?”
“Unc,” I whispered, and reached for him.
Then came the sandpaper sound of boots on cinder blocks. “Huger, Leland?” Reynold said. “You boys all right in there?”
“Unc,” I said now. “Unc, it’s them,” I said.
Fatback and Pigboy.
I reached to my shirt, fumbled with the buttons on my jacket.
“Boys,” Unc said, and glanced over his shoulder at me, his eyebrows together, trying to figure out what I was talking about, and in that instant there came to me the picture of Unc salting his seat and missing his fries, and the truth of how sometimes things got past him no matter what.
“Can’t be standing around yapping,” he said, and pulled the doorknob. “We’re expecting company any minute now, and—”
The door burst open, Unc’s hand shooting back with the shock of it, his whole body in a half twirl away from the door.
Here was Patrick, that greasy ponytail swinging behind him as he slammed in, then bald Reynold, the two of them smiling, between them five or six front teeth missing.
I got my jacket open, started to pull out the gun. But before I even had it out, Patrick whispered, “Company’s here,” and punched Unc hard in the face, his sunglasses broken in two in just that second, then Reynold’s fist met my own jaw, and I was out.
Mom.
Here she was above me again, her face in close, coming into focus just like she’d come into focus in the hospital room. But this time it wasn’t the flowery smell of her perfume I smelled first, but smoke off a fire.
Her skin was a beautiful gold in the light from the fire. Her makeup was all down by her eyes, like in the picture of her, but now there was no duct tape.
Mom.
I reached up to her and felt as much pain as when I’d woken up in the hospital, only this down below my mouth instead of the back of my head, and I let my tongue, fat and hot, go to my jaw, felt three or four loose teeth, and I was cold, my feet granite blocks, and I tried to move them.
They wouldn’t, and I heard the sound of a heavy chain, pushed myself up on my elbows.
“Huger,” Mom said, and touched at my jacket, pulled it a little tighter to my neck. “You don’t get up. You just rest.”
“Huger,” Unc said from my right, “you just lay still.”
But I was looking at my feet, at the leg irons around my ankles, the chain between them spiked into the ground.
“You’d be surprised the sort of things we got on hand down to the station,” Yandle said.
I turned to his voice. Mom touched at my jacket again, then my forehead, my shoulder.
Past her on the other side of a small fire sat Yandle on the tail of a Ram 2500 four-by-four. Beyond it, barely visible for Cleve Ravenel’s truck, sat Patrick and Reynold’s Dodge. Yandle: perfect trim mustache, crew-cut hair.
So it was Cleve Ravenel, the white-haired fat doctor who’d turned too quick to his name, scared. Cleve Ravenel, the man whose e-mail trash Unc had figured out to go through. Cleve Ravenel, member of the Medical University Consortium.
But where was he?
Yandle’s arm was still in the sling, and with the other hand he made the gun again, shot me.
“Don’t say anything, Huger,” Unc said, and his voice sounded different, stuffed up. He sat a few feet to my right, facing the fire. His legs were up to his chest, his arms around them, holding on. He had leg irons, too, spiked to the ground, and in the flicker of light from the fire I could see his eyes were swollen shut, the skin split open between them, blood, black in the firelight, down either side of his face. He still had his hat on.
“Patrick broke his nose,” Yandle said. “Did a splendid job at it, too.” He paused, gave a little laugh. “Of course Leland here never saw it coming.”
Mom touched at my jacket.
We were just out in the woods somewhere. The fire’d been there a while, some big pieces of oak burned down, the canopy of live oak above us dull browns all moving for the flames.
I had no idea where we were.
Yandle took a long swallow off a bottle of beer. He had on jeans and boots, an army jacket, a holster and gun. “But about