Thicker Than Blood - the Complete Andrew Z. Thomas Trilogy - Blake Crouch [26]
"Mike. Mike Parker."
"Percy Madding."
"It’s a pleasure to meet you, Percy," I said, stepping forward and shaking his gloved hand.
"Good to know you, Mike. And maybe I’ll drop in on you boys sometime with a bottle of tequila and a few of these." He wiggled the joint in his hand; it had burned out for the moment.
"Actually, we’re leaving in several days. Heading back east."
"Oh. That’s a shame. Well, you boys have a safe trip."
"Thank you," I said, "and oh, one more thing. What’s that mountain range in the north and east?"
"The Wind Rivers," he said. "Loveliest mountains in the state. They don’t get all the goddamned tourists like the Tetons and Yellowstone."
Percy pulled a silver lighter from his pocket, relit the joint, and spurred his horse softly in the side. "Hit the road, Zachary," he said, then clicked his tongue, and trotted away.
11
MID-AFTERNOON, I walked in the front door of the cabin, dripping with sweat. Orson lay on the living room floor, his bare back against the cold stone, a book in his hands. I stepped carefully over him and collapsed onto the sofa.
"What are you reading?" I asked, staring at the perfect definition of his abdominal and pectoral muscles. They shuddered when he breathed.
"A poem, which you just ruined." He threw the book across the floor, and his eyes met mine. "I have to read a poem from beginning to end, without interruption. That’s how poetry blossoms. You consume it as a whole, not in fractured pieces."
"Which poem?"
" ‘The Hollow Men,’ " he said impatiently, gazing up into the open ceiling, where supportive beams upheld the roof. He sprang up suddenly from the floor, using the sheer power of his legs. Sitting down beside me on the sofa, he tapped his fingers on his knees, watching me with skittish eyes. I wondered if he’d seen the cowboy.
"Go get cleaned up," he said abruptly.
"Why?" His eyes narrowed. He didn’t have to ask me a second time.
Looking in the side mirror, I watched the shrinking cabin. The sun, just moments below the horizon, still bled mauve light upon the western edge of sky. The desert floor held a Martian red hue in the wake of the passing sun, and I watched the land turn black and lifeless again. Heading east, I looked straight ahead. Night engulfed the Wind River Range.
We sped along a primitive dirt road, a ribbon of dust trailing behind us like the contrail of a jet. Orson hadn’t spoken since we’d left the cabin. I rolled my window down, and the evening air cooled my sun-scorched face.
Orson jammed his foot into the brake pedal, and the car slid to a stop. There was an empty highway several hundred feet ahead, the same I’d seen from the bluffs. He reached down to the floorboard at his feet, grabbed a pair of handcuffs, and dropped them in my lap.
"Put one cuff on your right wrist and attach the other cuff to the door."
I put the handcuffs on as instructed. "What are we doing here?" I asked.
He leaned over and tested the security of the handcuffs, and turned off the engine. It became instantly silent, for the wind had died at dusk. I watched Orson as he stared ahead. He wore another blue mechanic’s suit and those snakeskin boots. I wore a brown one, identical to his. One of the four closets in the hallway that connected the bedrooms and the living room was filled with them.
Orson’s beard had begun to fill in, painting a shadow across his face in the same pattern it spread across mine. Such subtleties create the strongest bond between twins, and as I watched Orson, I felt a glimmer of intimacy in a vessel that had long since died to that sort of love. But this was not the man I had known. You are a monster. Losing my brother had been like losing an appendage, but as I looked at him now, I felt like an amputee having a nightmare that the limb had grown back — demonic, independent of my will.
"You see Mom much?" Orson asked, his eyes fixed on the highway.
"I drive up to Winston twice a month.