The Marble Orchard (29 page)

At first, there came no response. Then one of the truck’s
windows screeched down. “That you, Elvis?” someone said.

Elvis clicked the bullhorn again. “It is. Who we got out here in the middle of the highway?”

“We could ask you the same thing. Who you got in the cruiser with you?”

“That ain’t no never mind,” Elvis answered. “Why the hell are you stalled out here in the road? Did you run out of gas?”

Again, it was a spell before any answer came from the rig, and Elvis felt naked standing in the span of the truck’s high beams. Finally, the voice from the rig came like a drifting cloud that choked out all other noise, even the grunting of the engines and the whine of frogs and crickets coming from the ditch water at the edge of the cornfield. “We got us a scanner in here, Elvis. You’d be surprised what you hear on it. You ain’t got to tell us who’s riding with you in the cruiser.”

Elvis leaned down and popped his head into the cruiser. Behind the chickenwire grating in the back seat, the blood had drained from Beam’s cheeks.

“Get that shotgun ready, Filback,” Elvis said.

The deputy unbuckled his seatbelt. “Why?”

“Just do as I say.”

Filback unlatched the Benelli from its cradle and fed several shells into the breech. He shucked one into the chamber and then held the gun against his chest.

“Just sit tight,” Elvis said to him. The sheriff stood back up, squaring himself in the crook of the cruiser’s open door. His mouth had gone dry, and he had to work some spit into it before he could speak again.

“Whoever it is in here ain’t none of your concern,” he barked through the horn. “Now I want you to come out of that rig showing nothing but hands.”

The truck’s fan clicked on. The belts sighed and whirred. “That won’t work,” said the voice from the truck. “We want to make an exchange. We got somebody in here with us worth a
sight more than Beam. She ain’t too pretty no more, but she’s a woman at least. You could take her down to the station and tie her to a cot and give her a fuck whenever business is slow. Only, I guess you don’t like pussy, do you, Elvis?”

Elvis ducked back into the cruiser. His hands were trembling now, and he had to grip the vinyl dash to still them. “Get on the radio,” he told Filback. “Call some backup.”

“Ain’t but one other car on patrol right now besides us,” Filback answered. “And it’d take them a half hour to get out here even if they was driving like a scalded ape.”

“Do it anyway. Call every dogcatcher and constable in the county if you got to, but get some more badges out here.”

Filback reached for the receiver and began signaling in, his voice coughing loud and palsied over the channels.

Elvis rose from the cruiser and squawked into the horn again. “I don’t do exchanges,” he said. “I want you to come out of that truck.”

A span of silence followed as the truck blew its heat at him, until the voice from the rig said, “All right. You don’t believe us, so we’ll show you our goods.” The passenger door of the Peterbilt swung open and two forms descended onto the ground. A Doberman hound followed them. The first figure was a woman. She was being coaxed forward by a man at her back and as both moved into the beam of the cruiser lights, they became clearer. The woman’s face was bruised and swollen but clean, her clothes caked with dried blood. The man behind her was Loat Duncan. He held a pistol under the woman’s chin and walked her to the front of the truck. The dog sat down in front of them.

“Here we are,” Loat said. “What you going to do now, Elvis?”

Elvis dropped the bullhorn and it clattered on the roadway. He drew his revolver. “Let the woman go,” he ordered, aiming the gun at Loat.

Loat shoved his pistol hard against the underside of the woman’s jaw. “I’ll do that when you give me Beam.”

Sweat dropped into Elvis’ left eye. He winked it away. “Let her go,” he said.

“Not until Beam is sitting in this rig here. That’s who I want.”

“You don’t get him,” Elvis answered. “What you get to do is let the woman go and then drop your piece and lay down on the pavement. We got back-up coming.”

Loat squeezed out a grin. “I don’t hear no sirens,” he said. “Look here, Elvis.” Loat ran the gun barrel down the woman’s neck tenderly. “I can blow this woman’s brains all over the corn and then go home and eat a cold supper and get to sleep just fine. Who the fuck do you think I am? I ain’t some redneck drunk on jar shine. You know me. I ain’t some nightmare you can wash away with a cold shower.”

Before he finished speaking, Filback swung out of the cruiser, bringing the Benelli to his shoulder and holding it on Loat.

“Steady,” Elvis barked, holding a hand out toward Filback. “Just breathe.”

Filback nodded, his cheek bulging against the shotgun’s stock. “I’m right here,” he said, his voice cool and certain.

“Y’all gonna have to do a sight more than just stand there and breathe.” Loat shoved the pistol into the woman’s neck and she mewled helplessly. “Give me Beam or things are fixing to get real messy.”

Elvis braced himself against the side of the cruiser. He couldn’t think straight. All he could do was hold his revolver on Loat and wait for Filback to get loose and nervous while the corn shook and rattled below the shoulder of the road.

Then the trucker stepped down from the rig. He walked into the cast of the headlights, dressed glossily in the tails of his fitted blazer, his white shirt collar wagging around his clean throat, the wind knocking his hair back. His shadow sloped over the pavement. “Evening, Sheriff,” he said.

Elvis knew him at once as the man from the courthouse, the one he’d had the puzzling encounter with not three days before.
He aimed the revolver at his chest. “Lay down,” he said. “Lay down on the road there and don’t say anything.”

The trucker put his hands on his hips, swinging his coattails out. “Now see, I can’t do that. If I did, I wouldn’t be able to help you. And I’m a man that’s all about helping others.” With the headlights at his back, the trucker was only a silhouette, and his voice seemed to emerge in a whirlwind out of the darkness. “Here is what you can do,” he said, folding his hands in front of him. “You can give us Beam and then we’ll let the woman go. Or you can stand there waving your little cap gun until one of us, me or Loat or your deputy there, loses his cool and gets jumpy. People get hurt when they get jumpy. You give us Beam and everybody can just drive away from all this. Now see, wouldn’t that be fine?”

Elvis felt his head lighten. His vision blurred so that he couldn’t clearly make out the corn or the road that stretched out before him. He felt as if he stood on the verge of a vast chasm of plummeting darkness and that he would surely soon plunge forever into that spinning emptiness. The sound of Beam kicking the cruiser’s rear window brought him back. He stuck his head inside the car. Beam was lying on his back, looking up at him through the chickenwire.

“Let me out of here,” he said. His eyes sparked with flinty light.

“They’ll kill you.”

“I don’t care. I know that woman.”

“I know who she is, too. She’s Ella Daugherty. What difference does it make?”

“I know her,” Beam repeated. “You’ve got to let me out. I want to go.”

“They’ll kill the both of you.”

“I need to get out.”

“Pete’s dead,” Elvis said. “You will be too if you go with Loat.”

“I know Pete’s dead. And I know what all will happen to me if I go with Loat. But this is something I need to fix. You just let
me out and I’ll go.”

Elvis stared at Beam, who had a coldly adamant look on his face, and knew this was something he’d reasoned out and that there was no stopping him. He opened the door, and Beam stepped out of the car. He started walking toward the rig, but Elvis stayed him with a hand. “Hold up. I need to take the cuffs off you.” Elvis fumbled with the keys.

“Just leave those binders on him, Elvis,” Loat said. “Be easier for us that way.”

“I’m not doing that,” Elvis said. “These cuffs are county property.”

“You need not to worry about what does or doesn’t belong to the county right now, Elvis,” Loat said. “You better just think about how you can get this whole shit mess cleaned up without nobody getting their brains blowed out.”

“I won’t do it,” Elvis said. “You can have him, but you’ll take him without the cuffs. That’s the only deal you get.”

Loat sighed and looked at the trucker.

“Do it,” the trucker said.

Loat waved his hand and Elvis unlocked the cuffs and took them from Beam’s wrists. “You ain’t got to do this,” he whispered.

Beam shook his head. “Yes I do.”

“If we can stall, back-up will be here.” But Beam was already walking into the lights of the rig.

“The fuck you doing, Elvis?” Filback asked.

“Shut up. This don’t need any of your reckoning.”

When Beam stood in front of Loat, close enough so the two men seemed to merge and become one, he said, “You can let her go now.”

“Stand between me and the sheriff,” Loat answered. “Anybody gets shot, it’s going to be you.”

Beam sidestepped into place.

“That’s good,” Loat said. “Now move on up here until you’re close enough to breathe on this bitch.” The trucker returned to
the rig, stowing himself behind the wheel.

Beam shuffled forward, his boots dragging on the gritty pavement. He saw Ella clearly now. Her clothes looked as if they’d been glued to her in haste. Wrinkled blouse. Hair a woven mess. Eyes swollen, blood crusted on the same denim shorts she’d been wearing when Beam first met her. He remembered their night on the sofa. It was all dizzy in its distance now, and he wondered how he had ever been there, naked with a strange woman as the moonlight slid through the window blinds.

“Turn around,” Loat said. Beam did as he was told. He could see Elvis now. He’d cocked his gun and was holding it at arm’s length. The blue cruiser lights slid over him in deep currents. Then Beam heard Ella’s breathing at his back. A warm wheeze. When Loat released her, she ran forward, then slumped onto her knees, catching herself with her palms on the pavement. A small choked sob rose from her throat, but Beam could do nothing to help her.

“Walk back with me,” Loat told him, jabbing the gun into his spine.

They went to the truck. Beam climbed up the running board first and got into the rig, seating himself beside the trucker, who held a Heckler pistol in his lap.

Loat whistled and the dog bounded up into the cab. Then he raised himself onto the running board.

“You won’t come looking for me, Elvis,” he yelled. “You want Beam to go on living you won’t come looking. I see squad cars anywhere near me and I’ll put a slug in him. I won’t ask questions. I’ll just do it. That clear?”

Elvis confirmed no understanding. He kept his gun on Loat, gauging the distance, the wind. He considered angles. The control of formulaic velocity.

When he pulled the trigger, the shot went high and ricocheted off the truck’s roof with a whine. Loat dumped into the cab and swung the door closed and then Filback let go on the windshield with the Benelli, the glass turning frosty. Elvis fired again and
one of the rig’s tires blew. Then the gears ground and the Peterbilt leapt forward. Elvis and Filback jumped away as the rig smashed into the cruiser, sweeping it down into the road ditch in a smatter of windows and headlamps.

Elvis ran to Ella and dragged her into the soft grass of the ditch. She moaned in pain when he touched her. He squatted and covered her with himself, his face shoved into the mud. Pistol rounds slapped the corn behind him, then the Benelli roared again and buckshot splatted against the truck before it turned and slurred off down the highway, the steel belt of the blown tire flapping and then flinging off with a shudder, a rage of sparks scattering out in a bright swarm from the wheel as the noise and light of the rig slowly shrank away into the blackness.

Elvis pulled himself off the ground. The cruiser steamed in the ditch. Its roof lights spun on in blue shivers. Filback staggered up to him, holding his shotgun limply. Gray smoke grew from the gun’s barrel, and slicks of dark blood draped his left arm. He’d taken one just above the elbow and the wound bled profusely.

“Easy Filback.” Elvis took the gun from him and laid it on the ground. “Sit down,” he said.

Filback crumpled to the pavement. His face was clear and still, not a flicker of agony or movement crossing it. He laid his head back on the road. “It don’t hurt,” he mumbled. “It don’t hurt at all.”

Elvis went to the cruiser. He tried to radio an ambulance, but the channels were only hot spray. He let the remote dangle and searched the car. Under the driver’s seat, he found a medical kit. He opened it and pilfered through the gauze and stitching equipment, the poultice bandaging. Ibuprofen in a bottle. Morphine syringes. Scissors. Antivenin for snakebites. A tourniquet. He closed the kit and carried it back to Filback. His cheeks were shaking now as shock took him. Elvis laid the kit beside him. He brought the tourniquet out and fixed it around Filback’s arm, wrapping the banding rubber tightly above the wound and then cinching it
with his teeth and knotting it off as the blood slipped warmly between his fingers.

“It don’t hurt,” Filback repeated.

“It will,” Elvis said. He punched a morphine syringe into Filback’s arm.