Chaingang

7

WATERWORKS HILL

Royce Hawthorne was shaking. It was cold in the tiny hillside cabin, but he didn't feel like building a fire. He was sure it would be warmer outside. The brightness of the day shone through the grimy windows. He threw some clothes on—the same old shirt and greasy pair of jeans—pulled on his scuffed cowboy boots, splashed icy water on his face, grabbed sunglasses, and lurched out the cabin door.

Outside it was summertime! The sun was blazing hot on his face. The sky was as blue as it ever gets, at least over North America, and it was a day for the fast movers: the jet jockeys from Scott AFB, and the T-38 pilots out of Eaker all overflew Waterton regularly. This morning there was a big tick-tack-toe game overhead; a crosshatching of contrails covered the blue. The fresh lines were as bright as white paint, as white as pharmaceutical cocaine. Where they began to dissipate, they had the look of downy cotton pulled out in a long strand.

Hawthorne stood eyeballing the perfectly crossed vectors, their straight-arrow pathways intersecting and then softening, dying, vanishing back into nothing.

He took off his shades and rubbed sleep or whatever it was that was gumming up the corners of his eyes. Still a little groggy and hung over, he needed to brush his teeth. Drink a brewski. His mouth was foul from too many tequila shooters and ghetto gang-bangers.

Royce could scarcely believe his deal had gone south on him. That was supposed to be later. But this business with Drexel was too off the wall for words. He felt that old Rockhouse anxiety attack that he'd experienced at the blackjack layout trying to resurface. He had trouble grasping what had happened. Drexel! Of all people to fuck him over, it's Mr. Straight. That preppie hippy dippy yuppy wimpy pimpy prince. Folding on him. Then with the melons not to take his calls.

He'd phoned maybe a dozen times, each time getting the two rings and that suck-face recorded message that he was “unable to come to the phone right now, but if you'll leave your name and number when you hear the tone—” It had tested all his willpower not to leave a screaming threat on his machine, but fortunately he wasn't quite that stupid or that high.

He tried to analyze what it meant. He couldn't. The guy had been golden. Golden. Where did this leave him? It left him between the hardscrabble and a rock crusher was where it left him: high and dry and broke and owing and holding serious weight. A whole mothering load of that Peruvian flake. Happy was right. He was an ounce-pouncer, señor. He should have stuck to twenty-one. He'd stepped into the deep end of the pool, this tadpole.

What in hell was he going to do? Call the cops? Sue Drexel? He couldn't move that kind of weight for that kind of dough. And giving it back to Happy was out. There had to be a way to save the deal. He blinked his glazed eyes, massaged his aching temples, ran his fingers through his long, stringy hair, and put his shades back on.

The edge of Waterton Cemetery was visible from where he stood. Just the extreme northeast fringe, where they buried the paupers. Unlike its manicured, golf-course green sister burial ground to the southwest, this edge was over-grown with weeds, and covered in a carpeting of dead grass and rotting mulch. There was a thick tree line to the right.

Looking down at the pauper's field, he was suddenly conscious of his aloneness. The empty mud of the hillside baking in the hot sun, the desolate fields below—flat from tree line to horizon—the look of the forgotten burial place, all hit him. He thought of his family's grave concerns, pun intended, their unanswered prayers, the countless families like his own whose forgotten histories were etched in dated stone.

Just as he put his sunglasses back on, he saw the movement. It had taken a couple of heartbeats to register. He caught a fleeting glimpse of something—a man in motion coming through the tree line? Brown clothing, so he wasn't a hunter. Not a game hunter, anyway. Although, Royce told his paranoia, some of these idiots around here were dumb enough to go out in the woods in their macho camouflage gear. “He didn't have no orange on, Your Honor” was a manslaughter defense around these parts.

Royce's sinuses hurt. He felt like he might be coming down with a cold. Well, that could be fixed. Coke paranoia pulled his mind back off the lines and he concentrated on the tree line. He saw him clearly. He was conscious of the fact that his firearms were all in the pawn shop.

He'd taken to wearing a little Legionnaire Boot Knife in a sheath tucked down in his boot. It was inside, naturally. He went in and got it and rolled his left sleeve up and quickly duct-taped a small black leather sheath to the inside of his left arm. He taped it very tight, but a hard pull and seven inches of razor-sharp 440-Stainless, Made in Japan, would be in his hand. He rolled the left sleeve back down, left it loose, and eased back into the doorway. He'd lost the man.

He stood and watched, feeling like Lionel Hampton was pounding out “Flyin’ Home” on his face, and just about dirtied his britches when the man came out of the wisteria fifty yards down the hill from him.

“Howdy,” he called to him.

“Hi.” It was a kid. Maybe twenty, nineteen—empty-handed. But he reached inside his jacket when he was twenty feet away. Mentally, Royce was planning the dive to the deck, figuring how he'd time the throw. The kid pulled a square of paper out. “Mr. Hawthorne?"

“Yeah?"

“Um—Mrs. Perkins is tryin’ to reach you on the telephone. She called Daddy when she couldn't find your number. He told me to give you the message.” He took the smudged paper. A country hand had printed, “Mary Perkins. Reel important,” and the number. “Daddy said bring it up here.” He shrugged and turned, moving away.

“Oh, hey. Thanks. Uh—don't I know you? Aren't you Beaudelle Hicks's boy?"

“Yes, sir."

“Well, would you please tell Beaudelle I really appreciate it?"

“Okay."

“Thanks for making the climb."

The kid nodded and disappeared in the wisteria vines. The kid could walk. Beaudelle lived on King's Road, in the field next to the cemetery. Hawthorne didn't have a listed number because, in fact, he didn't have a phone.

Mary Perkins. “Reel” important. He went inside to get his keys, wondering if somebody they'd gone to school with had died.