Chapter 60
Sam, Elaine and Little Moe climbed out from the underbrush where they’d been hiding. Elaine plucked pine needles off her fancy clothes; she really wasn’t dressed for tonight’s brand of entertainment. Sam looked pretty sheepish but I liked that he’d had the sense not to be a hero and watched out for Little Moe and Elaine instead.
“You called me Dad,” I observed as we wrestled the spike strip into the gutter so no one else would drive over it.
Sam snorted and we started to roll the Continental to the side of the road. But my injured leg spasmed and collapsed under me as I pushed, and I wound up on my ass.
“Your leg’s bleeding still,” Sam observed as he continued to push the car alone. Elaine came to me, pulled off her scarf, and began tying it tight around my upper thigh.
I didn’t feel guilty at all for not helping Sam muscle the car toward the shoulder of the road, one hand on the steering wheel, the other pushing on the open door. Judging by how much he huffed and sweated, a 70s Lincoln Continental rolling on nothing but rims was a lot of dead-weight Detroit iron. Maybe his next car would be a compact.
“You were surprised I was waiting when you came out the house,” Elaine whispered, continuing to fuss with her scarf even though it was tight enough around my leg by then. “You know, you may have all the others fooled, but I know your secret.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
She chuckled quietly and leaned in with brows arched, her smile mocking but not unfriendly. “You're terrified people will figure out you’re a nice guy.”
I was bemused, wondering why she would say something so blatantly nonsensical. “Sure, that’s me all right. The milk of human kindness just kind of oozes from my pores in a fine mist.”
Elaine glanced over at Sam, who’d finished pushing the Connie to the side of the road but still leaned on the rear bumper catching his breath. “I can’t let you keep on threatening to turn him against me, Markus. It ends right now,” she said. “No matter what I do on the side, I would never do anything to harm Sam, or you.
“Don’t
“Well, you’re here, ain’t you?” I said.
“What up?” Sam asked.
“I’m just welcoming Elaine into the family, boy. Such as it is, of course.”
“And what about that?” Sam asked, looking at Hoffman’s cop car. The strobes still turned; that disco trouble light still shot its rays out, painting the surrounding trees as it spun.
“Leave it be,” I said. “It makes a nice nightlight.”
Chapter 61
Little Moe stumbled as we walked down the hill and I was limping pretty bad by then. Sam scooped him up to carry him, and I’ll admit to leaning on Sam’s shoulder fairly hard myself. Elaine was stuck carrying Karl’s box but she didn’t seem unhappy to be lugging it: judging by how she kept looking down into it every few seconds, she was impatient to get some alone-time with Karl’s notes.
“Could it really be that simple?” I asked as we gimped our motley parade down the road.
“Backwoods racists and people with no fishing and logging jobs anymore, willing to go along with pretty much anything as long as they get a paycheck from the development boom. A twisted devil worshiping freak hiding behind being Chief of Police, with the very cops that should be busting him taking orders from him instead. And a hillbilly mafia running everything from behind the scenes, trying to clear out the riff-raff so they can cash in on all that outside money pouring their way.
“The Driver cut his teeth on the Beardsleys first, and there I was, born to be the fall guy for it. He’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing the locals then somehow convince to only kill the ‘right’ people. The powers-that-be protect him because they can’t afford the medicine if they lock him up, can’t lay him down because he’s got the goods on them, and he’s oh-so-useful. Then he turns on the fools that thought they were his masters, and it all unravels from there. Am I missing anything here?”
Sam shook his head. “I don’t know – actually, it sounds pretty convoluted to me.”
“What’s that?”
“Convoluted – it means complex, involved – “
“I know what it means, boy. I’m just surprised to hear you using a word with more than one syllable.”
“What is it with you two?” Elaine asked, throwing us both a sharp glance. “Can’t you be nice to each other even for a little bit?”
I thought about me and Karl, and of how much broken furniture had lain in our wake. Of the snarl that overlaid all our rambunctious affections, and the undertone of cruelty whenever we tried for anything approaching brotherly affection. This lady had no clue what nice meant to our kind.
“You know if I let you in too far it’d feel like turning my back on Uncle Karl, right?” Sam asked. “It’d be like I was spitting on everything he ever did for me.”
“I know.”
“Jansen was a liar, you’re nothing like him. And he was full of it about Mom and Karl too, wasn’t he?” Sam asked. “I mean, okay, he was right about Uncle Karl taking way longer than you without nothing happening. And I’ll admit, if Karl had been here tonight, I don’t see how he could have done better.”
I was feeling a little peaked, but I still gave Sam my best deadpan. “Don’t forget I had the advantage over Karl: Things had already started to break wide open when I got involved. Karl could have worked the pieces as good as me if he’d been alive – I was only half the team that should’ve been here tonight.”
But I’d had the advantage of desperation as well – I’d had to keep the pace quick. Sam had been getting mightily froggy; he’d been getting close to really attracting their attention.
If I hadn’t moved fast, Reese would have gobbled up Sam just like he did Karl. And even if Sam somehow side-stepped Reese, he would have wound up partying alone with Jansen and Hoffman up in that hell house.
“It was a bunch of horse puckie, what Jansen was trying to feed you,” I assured my son. “Don’t even waste time rubbing two brain cells together over it, Sam. This town is built on lies. Everyone here is full of shit.”
“Including you?” Sam asked.
“All you need to take away is that Karl was my big brother and your uncle, and that he was there for you when I couldn’t be. But now it’s time to let both him and Mom rest in peace, okay? Just focus on the fact that they’d both be proud of you, Sam.”
“How about you? Are you proud of me?”
But I only laughed.
Little Moe squirmed and moaned as he nestled in Sam’s arms – he was already sound asleep as crazy as that seems, and his mouth hung open. A hungry expression came onto Sam’s face as he looked down at this boy resting in his grasp.
“We did it, didn’t we, old man?” Sam asked, his voice full of wonder.
“Yeah, I guess we did at that. Good job, son.”
Sam stopped and I tottered as I almost lost my grip on his shoulder. He threw back his head and whooped at the heavens, louder than I’d ever heard him speak: “We did it!”
Little Moe woke up and started squirming and crying – we heard engines from below, multiple vehicles howling our way. “Oh shit,” Sam said. “Tubbs changed his mind. They’re coming back.”
We scrambled for the woods.
