The Hunt Club_ A Novel - Bret Lott [71]
Yandle stood, faced Thigpen. His good hand was out to his side, palm up, the key chain hanging from a finger. He said, “You can’t arrest me, Tommy. I got enough shit on you to sink a ship. Now.” He lifted his hand up a little higher. “Either we work this together and figure out a way through this that’s going to be mutually beneficial to the both of us, or—”
“I ain’t going to arrest you,” Thigpen said. He was smiling now, and I caught a glint of firelight off that gold tooth of his. He leaned his head to one side. “Way I see it, you come out a hero. You out here solo stumble on Reynold, and Leland and Eugenie and the boy out here to their Mary Jane hideaway. Patrick’s got to be halfway to Jacksonville by now, the chickenshit.” He chuckled. “Then all hell breaks loose, and in the ensuing gun battle everybody, Dr. Cleve Ravenel included, just plain gets killed.” He leaned his head the other way. “This, of course, includes you.”
“What?” Yandle said, and he gave the little shake of his head again, like he’d been slapped one more time.
“Get out your gun.”
“What you mean, Tommy?” Yandle whispered. He took a step back, then another.
Unc moved then, his head turned to the fire, looking past it to the other side and Ravenel’s truck. It was the smallest move, only his head turning, his back straightening a bit.
He heard something.
“Tommy, you don’t mean to—” Yandle started.
Then it all happened, all of it in four seconds, maybe five.
Patrick stood from behind the tail of the pickup, there where Cleve Ravenel lay. He had a shotgun, quick leveled it at Thigpen. “You fucking killed my brother!” he shouted, the words tight and wild and broken, and he fired.
Here was another flash, this one bigger, the roar louder, and he worked the action on the gun, fired again.
But in the piece of time between the action being worked and him firing, Thigpen fired, and the next flash off Patrick’s shotgun went up at a crazy angle, and I saw Patrick’s forehead burst, the way a melon will burst when fired upon. Just like that, and he fell, disappeared behind the pickup.
Now Yandle’s whole body was shaking, I saw in this same second, but he still pulled his gun out, held it up, pointed at Thigpen.
I looked up to Thigpen and the horse. The horse sat there, stone still, Thigpen leaned way over to his left in the saddle, his left shoulder hunched up, that smile twisted tight into a grimace. He’d been hit.
His gun was on Yandle, and he fired.
Yandle screamed. I flinched, and Mom too.
It was a scream beside us and in us, a scream twisted and clotted up and too loud, Yandle sprawled on the ground. His boots were there at Reynold’s head, almost kicked it for how his feet twisted and turned, like he was climbing a set of stairs.
Then I saw his right arm, the one he’d held the gun in. The fingers were splayed out, just like Reynold’s had been, but they were moving, twitching, one finger and another and another, twitching. The gun lay about a foot away from his hand, just right there, on the ground.
And there, about halfway up the sleeve of his fatigue jacket, was what looked like a splintered piece of wood poking up through the material, the material ripped open, that piece of white splintered wood shiny in the firelight.
It was bone.
All this in four seconds, maybe five. The time it takes to breathe in and breathe out.
Yandle stopped the scream a moment. His head snapped back and hit the ground, and he swallowed in quick breaths, his arm in the sling there across his chest.
“One-in-a-million shot,” Thigpen said, on his words the fact he’d been hit: his voice was hard, sharp, no air to it. He still held the gun on Yandle. “You idiot rednecks have made this harder than it had to be.” He took in a breath, held it a moment, let it out. “One in a million. That bullet tunneled right down the bone in your forearm, blew out the whole thing.” He took another breath, held it, let it out. “One in a million.”
Thigpen lay over the pommel, sort of rolled down the side of the horse until his feet hit ground, all with the gun out in front