The Ranger - Ace Atkins [78]
Gowrie grabbed Ditto by the shirt and pulled him in, with that stink breath and hot words, and said, “Go get my daddy. Go. Now!”
And Ditto scrambled off, figuring maybe he could slip off as everyone assembled, maybe no one would notice him being gone, and he could make a couple phone calls, because back here in the booger woods ain’t no kind of cell phone worked.
He found a path and then a trailer, and knocked. He tried it again and then just walked in, spotting the old man and Brother Davis passed out on the floor, the television looping some kind of porno movie with two black women on a beach. He kicked at Daddy Gowrie, an empty bottle within fingers’ reach, and he didn’t move, and for a moment Ditto thought that the old guy might be dead.
He kicked at him again, and then kicked at Brother Davis.
But the old men were dead drunk, and he figured that’s just what he’d tell Gowrie, to take some heat off him.
Back at the camp, trucks and cars had started up, blowing hot exhaust into the freezing air. Gowrie was squatted in the dirt, smoking a cigarette, in the headlight glow of his old black Camaro. He drew out some plans with a stick for a few of the fellas, and they smiled and grinned like some kind of dirty joke had been told.
And Gowrie looked at him and tilted his head.
“Him and the preacher are passed out.”
“You try and wake ’em?”
“I kicked at ’em.”
“Shit,” Gowrie said. “Brother Davis backslides when he preaches like that. I can’t fault him. Come on.”
“Who’s watching the women, the camp, if all of us leave?”
“How ’bout you?”
“I want to kill those bastards, too.”
Gowrie spent the smoke, flicked it into the dirt. Ditto spotted tattoos on his biceps reading GOD, LOVE, MURDER, each word with a symbol: an angel, a heart, a gun. The older man took a swig of Jack Daniel’s and passed him the bottle.
“You hold tight, little brother,” Gowrie said, smiling with blackened teeth. “You sit tight with your guns on that road and you hit anything you see move. I don’t care what you see.”
Ditto nodded.
The boys were off in a plume of dust and exhaust, red taillights headed in a line up the hill and down the highway. It was cold and silent and still as they disappeared. He stood there, thinking of a way to walk to a phone. They hadn’t left a single vehicle.
Lena returned to the porch, watching him. He smiled at her and moved to the base of the crooked wood steps.
“Don’t you want to go shoot some people?” she asked.
“I’m watching the camp.”
“Let me have a cigarette,” she said.
“What about your baby?”
“She’s asleep.”
He reached into his old coat for the pack and a lighter. He sat down on the stoop with her on the most ragged piece of property he could imagine, half the land’s pine trees not quite right for the cutting and the other half logged to shit. The charred rafters of the barn leaning into a weird heap in the moonlight.
“What happened?” she asked, taking a seat next to him, making his heart do a backflip.
“Somebody robbed our people. Tim got his hand shot up.”
“Who did it?”
“That soldier,” Ditto said. “Gowrie says he hates everything we stand for.”
“What do we stand for?” Lena asked.
“Maybe you should ask Charley Booth about that,” he said, smiling. “He seemed to be excited about all this mess.”
“Why are you here?” she asked. “You sure don’t seem to give two shits.”
“You hungry?”
“I’m good,” she said. “Why are you here?”
“I ask myself that every day.”
“Hard when you got nowhere else to be.”
“You need to get some sleep,” Ditto said, taking the rifle and slinging it back on his shoulder. “We don’t know what’s gonna happen with these boys. Might be good if you found another place to stay.”
“Soon as my limousine arrives, I’ll let you know.”
“But you’d leave if you could?”
She nodded.
“Without Charley Booth?”
She shrugged. “I don’t even