The Hunt Club_ A Novel - Bret Lott [68]
I didn’t get it, didn’t get any of this: what looked like the tearing down of some kind of pot greenhouse out here in the middle of nowhere, right here on Hungry Neck; Cleve Ravenel taken out by his own man; Mom taken hostage because she’d seen something she ought not to have; and no mention of selling Hungry Neck at all.
I looked to Unc, Mom still pressed to my shoulder, Yandle, Patrick, and Reynold still at it. I whispered, “Unc?”
“Be quiet,” he whispered. His head was bowed now, forehead on his knees.
“But Unc,” I whispered, “what about selling off Hungry Neck?”
“Boy,” he whispered, and on that single word I knew he meant for me just to shut the hell up, that that was the most important thing I might could do at this particular moment.
But I went ahead, asked him what I asked, because I was scared, scared at not knowing a damned thing. I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything, and I knew Unc did, by the way he’d said nothing.
I whispered, “Where is Thigpen?”
Unc lifted his head toward me, and I saw only half his face now, him looking at me, the one half moving and moving in the firelight, the other dark, lost, and I wondered if finally he was going to answer me, even if he’d told me to shut up.
But there was something different about him looking at me, I saw, in the tilt of his head, the line of his chin. He wasn’t looking at me, but past me, above my shoulder, and I turned, even with Mom still pressed into my shoulder.
There sat Thigpen on a pale horse, hands on the pommel of the saddle.
“Right here,” he said, smiling down at me.
He had on a heavy coat, jeans, that straw cowboy hat with the sides folded up, the front end bent down. He had a holster and belt at his waist.
“Leland,” he said, and nodded.
I glanced to Unc, saw him nod back. We’d none of us heard him coming up for the noise of the fighting. Only Unc’d heard. Only Unc.
It was a strange moment, his being here, a moment jammed with too much feeling on my part: relief, because this was the man who’d shoved that truck off the road; and there was fear, too, his presence inside all this stuff happening in front of us, none of it I could figure out; and there was in me, too, the feeling this was logical, that all would be revealed to me in a moment, now that the last person in this parade was here. All that just in his smile down at me from up on that pale horse.
Yandle, Patrick, and Reynold stopped hollering, froze.
Mom stiffened up, scooted around to see who was behind her.
“What the fuck you doing with my horse?” Reynold said, and I saw him out of the corner of my eye take a step away from Patrick and Yandle and toward Thigpen. “What the fuck you doing with my Jeb Stuart?”
Yandle said, “Glad you finally showed up, Tommy,” and put his free hand to Patrick’s chest, pushed him off, and drew his gun, held it on him. His arm was stiff in front of him, just like on TV and in the movies, and he glanced from Thigpen to Patrick, pointed the gun at Reynold, at Patrick, then Reynold. Firelight played off the barrel. “Caught these sons of bitches trying to dismantle a greenhouse back in here. Leland Dillard here and his nephew and the little lady here was in on it, too, and best I can figure they’ve committed at least a half dozen felonies.” His words still had that slur on them, but now his voice was bright, edged up and too quick.
Neither Patrick nor Reynold even looked at him, their eyes on Thigpen.
“Wasn’t sure how I was going to get backup in on this one,” Yandle went on, “but now you showed up, we can go ahead and—”
“Shut up, Doug,” Thigpen said. He was looking at Reynold, still a step closer to him than Yandle and Patrick.
Yandle’s gun moved down a bit. He looked at Thigpen. “But Tommy, we got us a 326 and a 372 on our—”
“So, this your horse?” Thigpen said to Reynold. He leaned a little forward, sat back again, the saddle creaking with it all.
“Damn fucking straight it is,” Reynold said, and took another step. “Now get the fuck off him right now, before I knock shit out of you,