The Hunt Club_ A Novel - Bret Lott [85]
Unc’s mouth fell open.
I turned to the boat. The beam was on Unc, and I could see it was a man sitting at the stern of a jon boat, and two people were sitting in the bow, and now Mom was at the side of it. One of those two stood, moved to the gunnel, and reached down, helped Mom get a foot up, pulled her in.
I looked at Unc. Still his mouth hung open, him caught back in the tide now, all of us slipping away and slipping away from Thigpen back on the bluff.
Then, like whoever was holding that flashlight knew what I was thinking on, the beam swung back up to him on the horse, growing smaller each second. He was looking at us, the gun still down.
“You were supposed to have handled all this before we met up over here,” the voice called out to him.
I thought maybe I knew this voice, and I started thinking on doctors at the club: those investors Yandle senior represented.
“Good God,” Unc whispered, his face to the voice.
“Ran up on some problems is all,” Thigpen called back, shook his head. “Busted a couple ribs back there,” he said. “Took a hit off a shotgun too.” He let out another breath, reined the horse around so they were facing the woods. “Nothing I can’t handle. Meet with you in a few.” He let Jeb go a few feet, then stopped him, turned. “Do what you want with the niggers and the boy and his momma. But you leave Leland for me. Hear?”
“You work for me,” the voice said, and the flashlight clicked off, and now we were back in darkness.
But it was only a second or so before the shadows came back, and now the boat was near on me, and I heard the trolling motor on it, the little electric job on the tail, bringing the boat here in silence.
There was the man, sitting at the motor, and Mom was in there, too, next to the person who hadn’t stood, and that person who’d helped Mom in was reaching down now for me, the boat right next to me.
Tabitha.
“He got a gun, Leland,” Miss Dinah said, and now I could see only Tabitha in the dark, the shape of her hair, what little light off the moon giving in to the whites of her eyes, a shadow to her nose.
Here was her hand, and I took it, brought my leg up to the gunnel, pulled myself up and rolled into the boat. I landed on something hard, long sticks, it felt like, and I saw they were shovels, two of them, laid out in the bottom.
Miss Dinah was on the bench next to Mom in the bow, Mom with a jacket around her shoulders and crying, Miss Dinah with her arms around her.
Tabitha crouched in front of her momma and took off her jacket, that same one she’d worn last night when I’d followed her through the woods.
She held it out to me, and I looked at her.
Tabitha. Miss Dinah.
I heard the hammer pulled back on a gun, turned, saw this man held a pistol out at me.
He was looking past me at the water. He had on a baseball cap, I could see, dark jacket and pants, heavy rubber boots to his knees. But I couldn’t make out his face for the black shadow cast by the bill.
“Let’s go, Leland,” he said, and here was that voice.
Tabitha lay her jacket over my shoulders, and I realized I was shivering for the cold. I looked at her, nodded, and she nodded back. But her eyes were on the man.
“Help him in,” the man said, and I knew that voice from deer-hunt Saturdays standing at the campfire, Unc parceling out the men, who would go with who on whose truck.
I knew that voice, knew him: forest-green Range Rover.
Now Unc was in the water beside us, and I leaned over the gunnel, said, “Unc,” so he’d know where I was, and held out my hand. He took hold of it, put a leg up to the gunnel, and I pulled him over and in.
He was breathing hard, and sat up fast, his face to the man.
Forest-green Range Rover.
It came to me.
Unc whispered, “Charlie Simons.”
“Back from the dead,” the man said.
He was dead. I’d seen the body, seen what little of the head was left, and those skinned hands like squirrels, the dark red and glistening muscle, the white tendons of his hands. I’d seen it.
Here he was, the one from the file footage on the news the night his wife came in and told me to cherish