The Hunt Club_ A Novel - Bret Lott [69]
“This the one you take on your drives over to Leland’s deer hunts?” Thigpen cut in. He was smiling.
“Who you think you are, you son of a bitch?” Reynold said. “You think ’cause you wear a fucking badge you can go on ahead and steal somebody’s horse?” He started around the fire then, his bald head glittering with sweat, his hands in fists.
Pigboy and Fatback. Yandle and Thigpen, showing up at the same time to the club, the two of them back there with us and looking at the body. They were together.
But, no.
No, they weren’t.
It was there, in front of me the whole time: set up and operating till kingdom come.
And Thigpen’s words: The only way through this all is for him to do what he’s been asked to do. You tell him things’ll be fixed. All’s he got to do is what’s been asked.
Two different stories.
And only now did I understand why Unc just wanted me to shut up: if I opened my mouth, Yandle might figure out something he didn’t yet know, namely, that there were other things at stake: the fact Constance Dupree Simons hadn’t murdered her husband, that somebody named Pigboy and Fatback had been ordered to void Middleton, that all of Hungry Neck itself was about to be sold off.
Cleve Ravenel, it occurred to me, was just feeding off both sides of the fence.
Greedy.
If it hadn’t been for your doctor’s wife coming along and blowing away her hubby’s head, Yandle said. He didn’t know Constance didn’t do it.
Reynold stepped past Mom and me, his smell as thick and nasty as the floor of his horse trailer, and moved toward Thigpen, and then, like it wasn’t even happening, Thigpen drew the gun from his holster, said, “That’s good, because if old Jeb here is the one you take on your deer drives, I don’t imagine he’s much gun-shy.” He pointed the gun at Reynold and fired on him, three shots quick in a row.
I’d heard pistols before. I’d fired them. I’d fired at cans, into trees, into woods I couldn’t know were empty. I’d shot squirrels before with a pistol, even shot a crow once for no good reason other than that I had a pistol and here was a crow.
But the sound back then was nothing next to the roar and flash off the barrel of this pistol, the flash reaching like thick red daggers to Reynold, with each dagger the sick thump of a bullet into his chest, the clean, quick whistle of them right on out his back. All three bullets hit the fire, where a nearly burnt-through log split in two, rolled a few inches, sent up sparks.
I saw all this, in just this instant.
He hit ground only a couple feet from Mom and me, his face turned to us, his bald head orange for the light from the fire. He blinked five or six times in a row, his arms still at his side. He was stiff, tensed over, eyes blinking away, and the hand I could see wasn’t in a fist anymore, but the fingers were spread wide, wide as they could get. He let go a deep breath from all the way down in him, a sound far away and heavy, like he was drowning in mud.
His hands went limp, his eyes closed, and I saw in the firelight steam up from his mouth, where that breath had let out, and steam up, too, from there in his chest, those holes.
“How old are you, Huger Dillard?” Thigpen said.
I turned. There sat Thigpen, one hand still to the pommel, the gun pointed at the ground.
I opened my mouth. I blinked, felt my throat go dry. I hadn’t breathed yet.
“How old?” Thigpen said.
“Leave the boy alone,” Unc said. He hadn’t moved, his arms around his legs, his face toward Thigpen.
“I said, how old?” Thigpen adjusted himself in the saddle. The saddle creaked, the horse twitched one ear.
I swallowed hard, whispered, “Fifteen.”
“Damn,” Thigpen said. “I didn’t see my first murder till I was twenty-one.” He slowly shook his head, smiled. “Must be true what they’re saying about how fast kids grow up these days.”
“Leave him alone, Tommy,” Unc said.
Then Mom screamed.
It started with a rasping breath in, long and hard, and for a second I thought maybe Reynold wasn’t dead after all, that here he was trying to breathe in all the air there was to breathe. But then the scream