The Hunt Club_ A Novel - Bret Lott [95]
I heard crying from behind me, turned to see Miss Dinah now leaning on Mom, her hands to her face, shoulders shivering.
Tabitha moved then, took a step away from Simons and toward her mother. But Simons reached out, took hold her arm, pushed her toward me. He stepped to Miss Dinah, the gun still pointed at me, and took from her hand a shovel, with the same hand took the other shovel from Mom’s hand, and held them both out to Tabitha. She looked at them, at him, and took them.
“Lord Huger, the two of you will be our excavators for the evening, and we’ll see what the Father of Fathers himself yields up. A trove beyond troves, I am certain.”
I looked at Tabitha, slowly held my hand out to her.
She looked at Miss Dinah, still weeping, then at me, at Simons. She took a step away from him, put out her hand to me. I took it, then took one of the shovels.
Her hand was cold.
I stepped through the low grass toward that center, Simons shining the beam past us so that our shadows were big enough, it seemed, to move past all this, move away and to some other life. Somewhere else.
Here was the string of the center circle. Only string between two stakes, and a rag. But something else, a circle into which we’d step, and start digging the hole where we’d pull up a coffin, replace it with our own bodies once the harvest had been completed.
Unc said, “Constance came to Huger in the hospital, gave him one of those baskets. Told him to give it to me.”
I stopped, looked at him.
He was facing Simons, his back to me, his head moving, listening. He’d heard something again, something none of us heard. Mom was looking at him, too, Miss Dinah still with a hand to her face.
“And?” Simons said.
“I told him to give it to Mrs. Dupree,” he said. “Your harridan. He did.”
I let go of Tabitha’s hand. She looked at me, turned with me.
“Thigpen reported to me he lost the missus for an hour or so the evening in question,” Simons said, matter-of-fact. “But he rounded her up in time for her reservation at the Rantowles Motel. So, as I see it, no harm, no foul. Mrs. Dupree has them, she can keep them.”
“Someone will see them,” Unc said. “Evidence of something. Someone will ask one thing, another.”
“Let me kill him,” a thin voice said from the darkness past Simons. “Let me kill the fucker now.”
Thigpen came into the backwash of light off the flashlight, there beside Simons. Unc’d heard him coming up and’d started talking in the hopes of stirring something up.
Thigpen looked dead, his face white, his breathing shallow and small for the broken ribs. His jacket was off, his left arm tied round with an old towel up near his shoulder. A pistol was tucked into his jeans.
Simons hadn’t moved, only laughed. “What, and surrender too soon to the great beyond the love of my late wife’s life? A blind trailerman on social security and policeman’s compensation? The latter-day saint of the redneck set? And besides, were you to kill him, I’m afraid we’d have something of a morale problem in the meantime.” He paused, looked at Thigpen, down and up. “You’re in no condition to work, it appears to me. We need them. But we don’t need them looking at their dead patriarch all the while.”
Thigpen took a couple of breaths, said, “He’s just stalling. Talking about them damned tiny pieces she took off with.” He took a step toward Unc, who tensed up, stood taller, his head weaving, listening.
“Unc,” I said.
But it was too late, and meant nothing besides: Thigpen swung at Unc, his fist buried into Unc’s stomach, and Unc bent in half, met with Thigpen’s knee in his chest, and hit the ground.
I took a step to him but heard the hammer cocked on Simons’s gun, and I stopped.
He said, “You would do well, Lord Huger the bastard