Every Cloak Rolled in Blood

Chapter Thirty-Three

The power is still out in Lolo, the night jet black. I open the barn doors so the chickens will have a shelter, then throw open the chicken house door and scatter them outside. I place the flashlight on the floor in the corner so its beam will flood the room. Then I save out one of the flares and pop the remaining three alight and spike them hissing and burning like a welder’s torch in the middle of the yard, so no one can jump me out of the dark. I sink the mattock into a plank on the floor and rip out a strip of wood that looks like it was torn from the heart of the tree.

I no longer care that my time on earth is coming to an end. What better way than in hot blood? Would you rather meet the grim reaper at Roncevaux or between bedsheets stiff with your own fluids?

The chickens have run for the inside of the barn, and the horses are in my secondary barn down by the river. A crooked bolt of lightning splinters a tree on the far bank, turning my house into a silhouette. Inside those two seconds of electric glimmer, I see the telephone wire flapping from the second-story eave. There are no trees around it. It was obviously cut. I pry and tear the planks loose from the two-by-eight joists that support the floor, and can smell the dirt and manure and rotted feed below. I hope Ruby gets my messages; I hope to see her before I die. I ask no help from the authorities because they will not believe the preternatural events I have witnessed in the last few months. The issue is not that the events challenge credulity; people believe what they wish to believe and often close their eyes and open their hearts to the worst people in the human race. The shame is theirs. Let them drown in their complacency.

I brought no gloves and my hands are starting to blister. I put down the mattock and wrap my right hand in a bandana, then work the mattock under another plank and prize it off of three nails that are newer than the others and hammered unevenly or hooked over.

Something is happening that I didn’t anticipate. The temperature is dropping, the rain turning to snow, although the forecast was for drier and warmer conditions later tonight. I hear noises up on the hill that make no sense: rocks rolling down the slope, clattering sticks, feet running through undergrowth.

I tear the plank loose from the three nails and fling it aside, then wedge up two more with the mattock and tear them loose with my hands and stick the flashlight down in the hole. Four feet away I see a suitcase on its side; I also see two metal army-surplus ammunition cans. I hook the mattock on the handle of one can and pull it toward me. The weight seems greater than anything the can could hold. The wind is stronger, shaking the walls. I hear vehicles turning off the dirt lane and into my drive. My heart is racing, my head pounding. I get to my feet and stare through the doorway at the sky and do not believe what I see. The clouds are smoke-colored and forked with electricity and have formed into a dome. The rain has turned entirely into snow, stippling the ground, stiffening the grass, sliding off flowers that have just started to bloom.

I hear the dirty roar of motorcycles, the doors of cars or pickup trucks slamming, and the cacophony of voices I have heard all my life. To my shame, I sold tickets in 1948 to a barbecue and election rally for United States senator Strom Thurmond, who, as a South Carolina judge, sentenced to death a seventeen-year-old Black boy who may have acted in self-defense when he killed a white man. I was in Bogalusa, Louisiana, in 1965, when Confederate flags flew all over the city and Klansmen fired guns into Black homes and churches; I was in Little Rock in 1957, when Black children had to be protected by National Guardsmen. I can go on and on with it. The degeneracy of a mob has no equal. It combines the mentality of the bigot, the coward, the sadist and the molester and the rapist. If there is an exception, I’ve yet to see it. I would love to line up a few of the participants in my sights.

Now they are surrounding my home, both the living and the dead. I know Grandfather’s Peacemaker will not get me out of my troubles. However, the other weapons in my gun cabinet would not avail me, either. I suspect the peak of Roland’s life was the morning in the year 778 when he rode up Roncevaux Pass with Charlemagne in the thin air of the Pyrenees and realized he had unknowingly gone through the metaphysical eye of the needle. He had entered immortality, and from that moment on, death could lay no claim on him.

That is why I have always tried to emulate my father, who went over the top five times. He was in the same zone as the Brits, who took sixty thousand casualties in a day. He said the wind carried the stench for three miles. I loved my father just as I did my grandfather. They came from different bloodlines and backgrounds, but their ethos was the same, and it made them members of the same private club. They were brave but they were kind. They were heroic but humble; they gave voice to those who had none. Is there a better ethos to wear on your shield, particularly when it’s your time to sign off?

I pull one of the ammunition cans from under the boards I’ve splintered and almost tear my arm loose from the socket. Then I pull out the second one and release the clamp that holds down the top and push it on its side and let its contents fall heavily on the floor. I have never seen a gold bar. There are three in the can. I do not know a great deal about the international price of gold. My understanding is that the price of a single bar of twenty-eight pounds hovers in the range of half a million dollars.

I try to get the suitcase out by pulling the handle with the mattock, but the fabric catches on a nail and wedges the suitcase between the floor and a post and the concrete foundation of the barn. I tear another board loose and open the four-inch blade on my Swiss Army knife and slice the nylon side of the suitcase, then work my hand inside the hole and touch a lumpy, tightly taped package that’s bleeding white powder on the packages around it. I take one taste and have no doubt of the suitcase’s contents. Jack and Clayton have stung me good.

I rip up two more planks and pull the suitcase free and drag it up on the floor, then slosh it with gasoline and throw it out the door onto the ground.

All the players are there and many others I don’t know. The temperature has continued to drop. I see no headlights on the highway. The clouds are swirling in a circular fashion and have changed in color from black to purple and red and streaks of orange. The snow continues to fall, thick and streaming and wet. Fog puffs from the mouths of Ginny Stokes and John Culpepper and Jimmie Kale, but none from the mouths of Jeremiah McNally and Major Baker and his men and others whom I don’t recognize. The bikers are booted and covered with tats and wear greasy blue jeans and leather vests and have beards and hair like Visigoths; the chains in their hands tinkle in the wind.

The bridge across the river is gone, including the pilings. I look to the north and the south of my property. I see no structure of any kind. The woods are thicker, the sandy stretches along the riverbanks free of any concrete boat ramps or rest stations or telephone or light poles or warning signs about buried power lines. The year could be 1870.

I must make a confession here. It is not easy to die alone. I hoped Ruby would be with me. Dying is like moving to another country, except we have no passport and no preparation for the experience we are about to have. The last word of many a dying soldier in a battalion aid station is “Mother.”

However, I have to free my mind of these concerns. I accept that I have to die this evening. But the manner in which that death comes is of enormous importance. Maybe those who die between fouled bedsheets are braver than the warrior who charges into the face of death. A feverish and degrading and debilitating death burns up the energy that physical courage and spiritual courage require. And dying by torture, as Saint Joan did at the stake, can be much worse. My stomach curdles when I look at the men with chains dripping from their hands.

Oddly enough, I address the major first, probably because his vanity requires him to practice a semblance of military discipline. “It’s awfully cold for you fellows to be out, isn’t it?” I say.

The brim of his hat is coated with snow. Not really, he replies. We’ve had a go at this quite a few times.

“Tell me, Major, do you feel comfortable with an entourage of moral imbeciles?”

I don’t think it wise to speak of these lads in that way.

“What do you think I should do with this suitcase full of drugs?”

Give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.

A man pushes his way through the group. He’s hunched inside a heavy coat with fur around the collar, hands stuffed in the pockets. His teeth are chattering, from either the cold or fear. It’s Ray Bronson, Ruby’s ex, probably wired to the eyes.

“You’re not walking out of here, Broussard,” he says. “That flare in your pocket won’t save you. Do the smart thing.”

“What is the smart thing?” I ask.

“To give up all hope.”

“Unlike some of these others, you’re alive, Bronson. Before I check out, I’d like to plant one in your forehead.”

“You think Ruby is gonna show up?” he says.

“Why shouldn’t she?” I reply.

“I killed her this morning.”

I feel a cold hand squeeze my heart, and I have to swallow before I can speak. “What about that, Major? Is this man lying?”

The major lowers his eyes.

“Don’t be coy with me, Major Baker,” I say. “This man does your dirty work.”

I did not order him to do that. He did it on his own. I’m sorry.

I feel my eyes watering. Ginny Stokes and Jimmie Kale and Jack Wetzel are standing side by side. Kale picks up a rock and throws it at me. It hits my forehead, right above the eye. Blood trickles through my eyebrow and down my cheek. Sister Ginny’s arms are folded on her chest, her brow creased. Jack has his hands clamped under his armpits, staring at nothing, as though his face is composed of mismatched parts.

“Where is my daughter, Major?” I ask.

He nods toward the hills at the top of the slope. Up there. She slipped away.

“Why there?”

I have a feeling you’ll find out soon enough.

“You own all these people?” I say.

They gave up their souls. It’s their misfortune and none of my own.

“Look me straight in the eye and tell me that Ruby Spotted Horse is dead.”

She is, sir.

“How did she die?”

Bronson went into her house with a knife. I think he set fires, too. Listen, Mr. Broussard, release the contents of the suitcase to Mr. Kale, and I’ll try to do what I can for your daughter.

“You can do nothing for yourself — how can you help my daughter?”

He doesn’t answer and even looks hurt. I feel numb all over, perhaps because I’m traumatized, perhaps because of the cold. The grass is completely white now, the river running dark and rippling in the center, the backwater on the far bank forming into sheets of ice.

“What’s your stake in all this, Mr. Culpepper?” I say. His AR-15 hangs upside down from his shoulder.

“You meddled in our business and cost my boy his life,” Culpepper replies. “Blood is blood. You spilled mine. I’m fixing to spill yours.”

“I see.”

I pull the cap off the flare and strike the rough surface of the cap on the end of the flare, not unlike scratching a kitchen match. I drop the flare on the suitcase. The gasoline-soaked contents burst into flame, the sparks spinning into the sky. I hear a moan from the crowd.

“Come here, Officer Bronson,” I say, pulling Grandfather’s revolver from my coat. “I’m going to tell you a story about Bonnie and Clyde. When it’s over, you’ll be as dead as they are.”

But words are cheap, and threatening an unarmed man is even cheaper. Besides, the hill above my main pasture just lit up.