Gone South (10 page)

“Doesn’t sound to me like I’ve got a snowball’s chance in Hell of grabbin’ him.” Flint tore off the page and folded it. “Too many cops in the picture.”

“It’s worth a shot. Fifteen thousand smacks ain’t hay. If you’re lucky, you might catch him ’fore he gets to the house.”

“I’d agree with you if I didn’t have to haul freight.”

Smoates drew on his cheroot and released a ragged smoke ring that floated toward the ceiling. “Flint,” he said, “you been with me — what? — six years, goin’ on seven? You’re one of the best trackers I ever had. You’re smart, you can think ahead. But you got this attitude problem, boy. You forget who pulled you out of that sideshow and who pays your bills.”

“No, I don’t,” Flint answered crisply. “You won’t let me.”

Smoates was silent for a few seconds, during which he stared without blinking at Flint through a haze of smoke. “You tired of this job?” he asked. “If you are, you can quit anytime you please. Go on and find yourself some other line of work. I ain’t stoppin’ you.”

Flint’s mouth was dry. He held Smoates’s haughty stare as long as he could, and then he looked away.

“You work for me, you follow my orders,” Smoates continued. “You do what I say, you draw a paycheck. That make sense to you?”

“Yeah,” Flint managed to say.

“Maybe you can grab Lambert, maybe you can’t. I think Eisley’s got potential, and I want to see what he’s made of. Only way to do that is to send him out on a run with somebody, and I say that somebody is
you.
So go get him and hit the road. You’re wastin’ my time and money.”

Flint took the box of crackers and stood up. He pushed his brother’s arm down under his shirt and held it there. Now that he’d been fed, Clint would be asleep in a few minutes; unless he was called upon, all he basically did was eat and sleep. Flint’s eyes found the three-armed monkey in the curio cabinet, and the same surge of anger that had made him break Junior’s fingers swelled up in him and almost spilled out.

“I’ll give Eisley a call and tell him you’re on the way,” Smoates said. “Check in with me from the motel.”

I’m not an animal,
Flint thought. Blood pulsed in his face. He felt Clint’s bones twitch within him like the movement of someone trapped in a very bad dream.

“Standin’ there ain’t gonna get you nowhere,” Smoates told him.

Flint turned away from the three-armed monkey and the bald-headed man behind the desk. When the door had closed at Flint’s back, Smoates released a harsh little hiccup of a laugh. His belly shook. He crushed his cheroot out in the plate of grease and bones, and it perished with a bubbly hiss. His laughter gurgled and swelled.

Flint Murtaugh was on his way to meet the Pelvis.

T
HREE HOURS AFTER SHOOTING
a man to death, Dan Lambert found himself sitting on a screened porch, a ceiling fan creaking overhead, with a glass of honeysuckle tea in his hand and a black woman offering him a refill from a purple pitcher.

“No ma’am, thank you,” he said.

“Lemme get on back to the kitchen, then.” Lavinia Gwinn put the pitcher down on the wicker table between Dan and Reverend Gwinn. “Terrence and Amelia oughta be here ’bout another half hour.”

“I hope you don’t mind me stayin’. I didn’t know your son was comin’ over when your husband invited me.”

“Oh, don’t you worry, we gots plenty. Always cook up a feast on Thursday nights.” She left the porch, and Dan sipped his tea and listened to the cicadas droning in the green woods around the reverend’s white clapboard house. The sun was sinking lower, the shadows growing between the trees. Reverend Gwinn occupied a wicker rocking chair, his fingers laced around his tea glass and his face set with the expression of a man who is calm and comfortable with life.

“You have a nice house,” Dan said.

“We like it. Had a place in the city once, but it was like livin’ in an alarm clock. Lavinia and me don’t need much to get by on.”

“I used to have a house. In Alexandria. My ex-wife and son still live there.”

“Is that where you’re headed, then?”

Dan took a moment to think about his answer. It seemed to him now that all along he’d known the house on Jackson Avenue was his destination. The police would be waiting for him there, of course. But he had to see Chad, had to tell his son that it had been an accident, a terrible collision of time and circumstance, and that he wasn’t the cold-blooded killer the newspapers were going to make him out to be. “Yes,” he said. “I believe I am.”

“Good for a man to know where he’s goin’. Helps you figure out where you’ve been.”

“That’s for damn sure.” Dan caught himself. “Uh … sorry.”

“Oh, I don’t think the Lord minds a little rough language now and again, long as you keep His commandments.”

Dan said nothing.
Thou shalt not kill,
he was thinking.

“Tell me about your son,” Gwinn said. “How old is he?”

“Seventeen. His name’s Chad. He’s … a mighty good boy.”

“You see a lot of him?”

“No, I don’t. His mother thought it was for the best.”

Gwinn grunted thoughtfully. “Boy needs a father, I’d think.”

“Maybe so. But I’m not the father Chad needs.”

“How’s that, Mr. Farrow?”

“I messed up some things,” Dan said, but he didn’t care to elaborate.

A moment passed during which the smell of frying chicken drifted out onto the porch and made the hunger pangs sharpen in Dan’s belly. Then Reverend Gwinn said, “Mr. Farrow, excuse me for sayin’ so, but you look like a man who’s seen some trouble.”

“Yes sir.” Dan nodded. “That’s about right.”

“You care to unburden it?”

Dan looked into the reverend’s face. “I wish I could. I wish I could tell you everythin’ I’ve been through, in Vietnam and after I left that damned place, but that’s no excuse for what I did today.” He looked away again, shamed by Gwinn’s compassion.

“Whatever you did, it can be forgiven.”

“Not by me. Not by the law, either.” He lifted the cool glass and pressed it against his forehead for a few seconds, his eyes closed. “I wish I could go back and make everythin’ right. I wish I could wake up and it’d be mornin’ again, and I could have another chance.” He opened his eyes. “That’s not how life works though, is it?”

“No,” Gwinn said. “Not
this
life, at least.”

“I’m not much of a religious man. Maybe I saw too many young boys get blasted to pieces you couldn’t have recognized as part of anythin’ human. Maybe I heard too many cries for God that went unanswered.” Dan swigged down the rest of his tea and set the glass aside. “That might sound cynical to you, Reverend, but to me it’s a fact.”

“Seems to me no one’s life is easy,” Gwinn said, a frown settling over his features. “Not the richest nor the poorest.” He rocked gently back and forth, the runners creaking. “You say you’ve broken the law, Mr. Farrow?”

“Yes.”

“Can you tell me what you’ve done?”

Dan took a long breath and let it go slowly. The cicadas trilled in the woods, two of them in close harmony. “I killed a man today,” he answered, and he noted that Gwinn ceased his rocking. “A man at a bank in Shreveport. I didn’t mean to. It just happened in a second. It was … like a bad dream, and I wanted to get out of it but I couldn’t. Hell, I was never even a very good shot. One bullet was all it took, and he was gone. I knew it, soon as I saw where I’d hit him.”

“What had this man done to you?”

Dan had the sudden realization that he was confessing to a stranger, but Gwinn’s sincere tone of voice urged him on.

“Nothin’, really. I mean … the bank was repossessin’ my pickup. I snapped. Just like that. I started tearin’ up his office. Then all of a sudden a guard was there, and when he pulled a gun on me I got it away from him. Blanchard — the man I shot — brought a pistol out of his desk and aimed it at me. I heard the hammer of his gun click. Then I pulled the trigger.” Dan’s fingers gripped the armrests, his knuckles white. “I tried to stop the bleedin’, but there wasn’t much I could do. I’d cut an artery in his neck. I heard on the radio that he was dead on arrival at the hospital. I figure the police are gonna catch me sooner or later, but I’ve got to see my son first. There are some things I need to tell him.”

“Lord have mercy,” Gwinn said very quietly.

“Oh, I’m not deservin’ of mercy,” Dan told him. “I’d just like some time, that’s all.”

“Time,” the reverend repeated. He took the silver watch from his pocket, snapped it open, and looked at the numerals.

“If you don’t want me sittin’ at your table,” Dan said, “I can understand.”

Gwinn’s watch was returned to the pocket. “My son,” he said, “will be here any minute now. You didn’t ask what kinda work Terrence does.”

“Never thought to.”

“My son is a deputy sheriff in Mansfield,” Gwinn said, and those words caused the flesh to tighten at the back of Dan’s neck. “Your description on the radio?”

“Yes.”

“Terrence might not have heard about it. Then again, he might’ve.” Gwinn held Dan’s gaze with his dark, intense eyes. “Is what you’ve told me the truth, Mr. Farrow?”

“It is. Except my name’s not Farrow. It’s Lambert.”

“Fair enough. I believe you.” Gwinn stood up, leaving the chair rocking. He went into the house, calling for his wife. Dan left his chair as well, his heart beating hard. He heard the reverend say, “Yeah, Mr. Farrow’s got a ways to go and he’s not gonna be stayin’ for dinner after all.”

“Oh, that’s a shame,” Lavinia answered. “The chicken’s all done!”

“Mr. Farrow?” There was just a trace of tension in Gwinn’s voice. “You care to take some chicken for the road?”

“Yes sir,” Dan said from the front door. “I sure would.”

The reverend returned carrying a paper bag with some grease stains on the bottom. His wife was following along behind him. “What’s your hurry, Mr. Farrow? Our boy oughta be here directly!”

“Mr. Farrow can’t stay.” Gwinn pushed the paper bag into Dan’s hand. “He’s gotta get to … New Orleans, didn’t you say, Mr. Farrow?”

“I believe I might have,” Dan said as he accepted the fried chicken.

“Well, I’m awful sorry you’re not gonna be joinin’ us at the table,” Lavinia told him. “You gots family waitin’ for you?”

“Yes, he does,” Gwinn said. “Come on, Dan, I’ll walk you to your truck.”

“You take care on that road now,” Lavinia continued, but she didn’t leave the porch. “Crazy things can happen out there.”

“Yes ma’am, I will. Thank you.” When he and the reverend had reached the pickup and Lavinia had gone back inside, Dan asked, “Why are you helpin’ me like this?”

“You wanted some time, didn’t you? I’m givin’ you a little bit. You better get on in there.”

Dan slid into the driver’s seat and started the engine. He realized that some of Blanchard’s dried blood still streaked the steering wheel. “You could’ve waited. Just turned me in when your son got here.”

“What? And scare Lavinia half to death? Take a chance on my boy gettin’ hurt? Nosir. Anyhow, seems like you’ve had enough trouble today without me makin’ more for you. But you listen to me now: the sensible thing to do is turn yourself in after you see your son. The police ain’t savages; they’ll give an ear to your story. All runnin’s gonna do is make things worse.”

“I know that.”

“One more thing,” Gwinn said, his hand on the window frame. “Maybe you’re not a religious man, but I’ll tell you somethin’ true: God can take a man along many roads and through many mansions. It’s not where you are that’s important; it’s where you’re goin’ that counts. Hear what I’m sayin’?”

“I think so.”

“Well, you keep it to heart. Go on now, and good luck to you.”

“Thanks.”
I’ll need it,
he thought. He put the Chevy into reverse.

“So long.” Gwinn let go of the truck and stepped back. “The Lord be with you.”

Dan nodded and reversed the truck along the dirt drive that led from the reverend’s house to the cracked concrete of Highway 175. Gwinn stood watching him go as Dan backed onto the road and then put the truck’s gears into first. The reverend lifted his hand in a farewell gesture and Dan drove away, heading southbound again but this time rested, his head clear and for the moment free of pain and a paper bag full of fried chicken on the seat beside him. He had driven perhaps a mile from Gwinn’s house when a car came around the bend and passed him, going north, and he saw a young black man at the wheel and a black woman on the passenger side. Then he was around the curve himself, and he gave the truck a little more gas.
The Lord be with you,
he thought. But where had the Lord been at three o’clock this afternoon?

Dan reached into the bag and found a drumstick, and he chewed on it as he followed the curvy country road deeper into the Louisiana heartland. As the sun continued to settle in the west and the miles clicked off, Dan focused his thoughts on what lay ahead of him. If he swung east and got on the freeway again, he would reach Alexandria in about an hour. If he stayed on this slower route, it would take double that. The sun would be gone in another thirty minutes or so. The police would surely be staking out the house on Jackson Avenue, and those prowl cars had mighty strong spotlights. He couldn’t even risk driving past the house. How long would it take before the police slacked off their surveillance? He might think about giving himself up after he’d talked to Chad, but he wasn’t going to let the boy see him wearing handcuffs. So the question was: how was he going to get to Chad without the police jumping all over him first?

South of a small hamlet called Belmont, Dan pulled into a Texaco station, bought five dollars worth of gas, a Buffalo Rock ginger ale to wash down the excellent fried chicken, and a Louisiana roadmap. The gray-haired woman who took his money was too interested in her
Soap Opera Digest
to pay him much attention. In the steamy blue evening Dan switched on the pickup’s headlights and followed Highway 175 as it connected with Highway 171 and became a little smoother. At the town of Leesville, where he found himself stopped at a traffic light right in front of the police station, he took a left onto Highway 28 East, which was a straight shot into Alexandria. He had about thirty miles to go.