Currency of Souls

“I need it. It’s the only way I can get to Kyle.”

“Yeah well, that’s touching as all hell but you’re not going to be in much shape to do anything for the little prick if your head’s no longer attached.”

Our eyes meet in the mirror. Both of us are sweating, for different reasons. He’s getting ready to kill me; I’m getting ready to die.

“Take the truck,” I suggest then. “Just take me with you as far as Hill’s house. After that you can get gone and you’ll never hear from me again.”

“No dice.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Because I don’t like you.” The blade pins my Adam’s apple in place, biting the flesh there, drawing blood I can feel trickling down into my shirt.

“We did everything we could for your girl.” I’m hoping shifting the focus of the conversation might buy me some time. That’s not something I was trained to do; it’s just plain old common sense.

“It wasn’t enough.”

“Hey, you brought her here. If you hadn’t—”

“Don’t feed me that bullshit. We were here tonight because we were supposed to be here. I don’t much like the idea of not being in control of what I do, but that’s pretty much tough titty right now, right? Whatever juju you and your friends were doing up in that bar, it was what decided where we’d be, who would die and…” He shakes his head. “I’m getting out of here now.”

Trying to grab hold of a coherent thought right now is like to trying to find a licorice whip in a bucket of snakes, so I quit trying and let myself relax. He’s not getting the truck; that much I’m sure of. Everything else is up in the air, so I decide I’m going to end this, right after I ask him something that’s been on my mind since last night. “Did you kill Eleanor Cobb on purpose?”

“I didn’t kill her at all.”

“How’s that?”

“She came at us. Almost as if she was sitting there around that corner, engine idling, waiting for the first sign of headlights coming in the opposite direction so she could plow into them. Into us. Crazy old bitch.”

No, I think and close my eyes. Not crazy. Lost. Stuck with a husband who grew older every time he took someone else’s pain away, a man afraid to love her too much because he was going to die soon, whether because of his gift, or because of his sins and Hill’s regulating, it didn’t matter. She was going to lose him soon, and both of them knew it. Hell, everyone knew it. So she went first, and he followed.

“I have a favor to ask.”

The kid frowns. “What?”

“I want to turn on the radio.”

“For what? You’re getting out.”

“That’s the thing. I’m not getting out. I can’t, so I’d appreciate you letting me have the radio on. That way I don’t have to hear you breathing when you do what you have to do.”

Brody scowls at me. “Are you out of your fucking tree completely, or what?”

“No, but it looks like we’ve reached an impasse here, and you’re the one with the knife. All I want now is some music.”

“Just like that, huh?”

“Just like that.”

He holds the knife away from my throat, just enough for me to see that it’s a big son of a bitch, thick- handled, with a curved blade on one side, a serrated one on the other. The kind of knife my father used for skinning bucks.

He’s breathing quickly, sweating more. “You and Carla and the goddamn music. I don’t have this kind of time to waste.”

“So don’t.”

I reach for the stereo, leaning into the blade. Flip the switch, and sit back.

A moment passes. Wintry is a helpless shadow beyond the window.

I start to tremble all over. My guts squeeze bile into my mouth. Brody’s going to assume it’s because of him, because of what we both know he’s about to do. But it isn’t that at all. I’m not afraid of him.

It’s the goddamned stereo.

I’m afraid of the radio and what’s going to happen because I’ve turned it on, something I promised myself I’d never do again. Not in this truck. Not after the last time.

Brody curses, brings the knife back to my throat, positions the serrated side beneath my Adam’s apple but doesn’t start cutting. Cold metal teeth nip the skin. I figure maybe out of respect he’s waiting for the music to start. So we watch the stereo.

The green CD light blinks on. The disk begins to spin with a faint whirring sound.

Then at last, after what seems like years of silence, the music starts. Patsy Cline. “Crazy”.

And with a sigh that might be regret, anger, or relief, Brody begins to cut my throat.

* * *

“We’re closed.”

Confused and struggling to accept that somehow his mind has been playing tricks on him, Vess lingers in the doorway of a tavern memory tells him burned to the ground last night but his eyes swear is still here, untouched by fire on the outside, only slightly blackened on the inside. Near the far end of the room, by the bar, a svelte woman clad in gray tempers a carpet of soot and ash with short sharp smacks from a ragged looking broom. The air smells faintly of smoke.

“Of course you’re closed, but she’s looking for him,” Vess explains, but moves no further into the long narrow room. A single hurricane lamp has been set up on the counter, creating a murky twilight through which the woman moves like a delicate ghost. Thin shadows twitch spasmodically around the rows of bottles behind the bar. “The Sheriff I mean, of course. That might not have been clear. I don’t always say what I mean the way I mean to say it. Means I usually have to elaborate. I don’t—Hassak!” Annoyed with himself, he wrenches the hat from his head and tugs at it, forgetting its contents until the bones hit the floor like pebbles and skitter away from him. “Oh.” He drops to his haunches, stretches his upper body as far as he can over the threshold to avoid stepping foot into the room and therefore risking the woman’s ire. A single phalange remains maddeningly out of reach.

“Not here,” whispers the finger.

“What are you doin’?” the woman asks, and he jerks back. She has approached without his hearing her. He looks from the kernel of bone at her feet to her face and smiles involuntarily. She is without a doubt one of the most beautiful creatures he has ever seen, with her auburn hair and light green eyes. Often, on the endlessly lonely nights beneath the stars, he has dreamed—not of this woman—but of women like her. Maybe in his imaginings they were less severe looking, not so hard of eye or tight of mouth, but the basic model is the same. He finds his already muddled thoughts scrambling, his mind exploring fantasies he will never live to see made real, even if the same stars he sleeps under were to align and the woman decided to court a pauper.

“I asked what you were doin’?”

“Sorry,” he splutters, attempting a half-bow despite his posture already being an approximation of one. It’s an awkward feat that almost sends him sprawling, so he quickly steadies himself and rises, the last fragment of finger forgotten.

“I’m Kirk Vess.”

“I know who you are,” the woman responds icily. “I barred you from here, remember?”

He doesn’t, but nods.

“What do you want?”

“A woman’s finger brought me here,” he says, nodding pointedly at the phalange two inches from her shoe. “To find the Sheriff.”

“A finger?”

“Yes Ma’am.”