The Hunt Club_ A Novel - Bret Lott [70]
I took hold of her and tried to push us away, tried to scramble away from this body, only to find the leg irons were still there on my ankles, that Mom was still tied to her own spike, and we had nowhere to go except here, spiked to the ground. Still Mom screamed.
Then Thigpen fired again, and I turned, saw he’d shot this one off into the air.
I felt my breaths in and in too quick, Mom doing the same. She held on to me, her arms around me too hard, though they were exactly what I wanted: Mom holding me.
“Tommy?” Yandle said.
His gun was down now, his mouth open. He stared up at Thigpen.
Patrick was gone.
“Unlock them,” Thigpen said.
“But Tommy,” Yandle whispered, “why’d you shoot—”
“Do it,” Thigpen said, and cocked the hammer.
Yandle quick shook his head, like he’d been slapped awake. Mom whimpered beside me. Unc looked at Thigpen.
Yandle put his gun back in the holster, reached into the front pocket of his fatigue jacket, pulled out a key chain, all with his eyes on Thigpen.
“We was just running a pot farm back here,” Yandle said as he started around the fire, his steps slow, his hand with the keys trying to find the right one without the use of that arm in a sling. His voice had emptied itself of that police-boy pitch, now just a Walterboro nothing. “Cleve Ravenel come to me one afternoon looking to make some money, told me he could bankroll a little operation back here.” He nodded toward Unc, still without taking his eyes off Thigpen. “Figured Hungry Neck’d be the smartest place, what with a blind man watching over the place.” He paused. “And a snot-nose runt his only helper.” He tried a laugh. Still his hand fumbled with the keys. “This parcel back here’s tough as hell to get into, so we set up in here.”
He stopped altogether, forgot the keys, like something had occurred to him, a big idea. “Then the fucking doctor’s wife come in and killed the son of a bitch, which of course makes this land hotter’n shit, what with SLED crawling around, looking for whatever the hell it is they may want to find, chief among it all maybe, we’re thinking, our little operation. I hear tell from Mitch over to the office SLED is coming in here tomorrow morning, going to give Hungry Neck a comb-through.”
He was just jabbering now, talking and talking, trying to reach something in Thigpen.
“So we’re liquidating. Getting the hell out of Atlanta before it burns to the ground.” He tried the same laugh again.
“Unlock them,” Thigpen said.
Yandle stood there a second longer, then looked down at the key chain in his hand, shook his head, finally found the right one.
He went to Unc first, knelt in front of him, slipped the key into the clamp on Unc’s left foot, and the clamp fell open. He pulled the key out, opened the other, his eyes always on Thigpen.
Now both Unc’s feet were free, but he didn’t move, only held his legs with his arms.
Yandle stood. He was coming toward us and had to step over Reynold’s body, there between us and the fire.
He knelt at Mom’s feet, took the rope her ankles were tied with, and started working the knot at the spike with his one hand until Mom’s left ankle was free. He was looking up at Thigpen, scared shitless, his hand shaking, his face wet with sweat that glistened in the firelight. Mom pulled her foot away from him hard, jammed herself into me deeper to get away from that body there and at the same time trying to hold on to me, like she might be able to protect me from something.
“Tommy, you can’t arrest me,” Yandle said. “You can’t.”
“Finish up,” Thigpen said.
“Tommy,” Yandle said, “Tommy, we can work this together. We can figure out how to make it look like Reynold and—”
“Finish,” he said, and now the saddle creaked again, the horse’s ear twitched.
Yandle turned to my leg irons, put the key in. He fished it one way and another, and then mine fell open, and I pushed back and away from him, Mom with me, the two of us scooting hard