“What the hell do we do now?” Michael said.
“We have to keep going,” Conner said. “There’s no choice.”
Chapter Eleven
Daryl Teague was abnormally huge. He arrived in a Ford F-150 about the same time the wrecker showed up from Cerutti’s Tire and Auto shop, and the truck righted itself when he stepped out of the driver’s seat and onto the pavement. The bartender didn’t offer to call the police and Conner didn’t ask him to. Conner was deeply angry. He folded his arms behind his head like a runner at the end of a marathon and sighed.
Daryl Teague had the air of a man who did not give a shit about anything and was too big for anyone to make him. Daryl’s pinky and ring finger were missing from his left hand – something they saw immediately as he brought a cigarette repeatedly to his mouth. He noticed their eyes watching his hand and held up his three-fingers and wiggled them, smiling, seemingly proud. He said he lost them from frostbite – the result of driving during the winter with the window down while holding a cigarette. “My fingers went numb and I didn’t even realize it,” he said. “It gets real cold up here.” That was his story, but they all knew it was untrue. How could someone not realize his fingers were being frozen black? It was impossible. Conner and Jonathan just smiled and nodded, anyway.
“Why didn’t you just roll up your window?” Michael asked.
Daryl Teague smiled. “Don’t want the truck to smell like smoke.” For a man that size, everything could be a joke. He barely took a breath without cigarette smoke. Daryl raised his three remaining fingers to his lips and removed the second cigarette he had finished since arriving at The Forge. They could smell the inside of the truck from ten feet away, ash and wet dirt.
Mario from Cerutti’s Tire and Auto gave the SUV a look over and was then on the phone with his brother at the shop. A tall, bent man with a permanent Italian five-o’clock shadow, he finally walked over to the group. “I don’t have this size tire in stock right now. It’ll take me twenty-four hours to get them up here. Gotta ship them in. That’s as quick as it can be done. Everything’s closed now anyway, so I can’t order them till the morning. I’ll tow it tonight, put them on as soon as they get in.”
It was nearly eight o’clock at night now. They needed to be hiking through Coombs’ Gulch by six in the morning to keep pace with Conner’s plan.
Jonathan and the brothers turned to a small huddle. “I don’t see how this is going to work,” Jonathan said. “This just isn’t happening.”
“We need to stick to the plan. Everything can be fixed, paid for. It’s just a bump in the road.”
“It’s a bit more than a bump. I got a bad feeling about all this.”
“Did you ever have a good feeling about this? Don’t get superstitious.”
Daryl approached like the shadow of a mountain in the night, and they all turned and looked up at him. “Listen, I know you guys had a deal with Bill. He told me about it a few days ago. If you all want, I can drive you out there so you can get started on your trip.” He inhaled deeply on another cigarette. “Tell you what. Leave the keys with me. When the truck is fixed, me and my buddy will drive it out to the cabin and drop it off for ya; how’s that sound?”
Conner was still rolling his eyes in anger.
“Yeah. Yeah, that’ll work,” Michael said. “We’ll pay you for your trouble.”
Daryl smiled. “Damn right. I’m sure Bill is still out there right now, anyway. It’s been a while since anybody rented the place, so he was going up to give it a once-over. Can’t say I’m surprised he forgot to come back. Load your gear in the back.” He looked at the three of them and nodded at Michael. “You, big fella, you grab the front seat, and you two smaller guys can squeeze in the back.”
Mario was waiting on a final decision, saying he had another call. Daryl seemed to consider the three outsiders for a moment. “Don’t worry yourselves about the car; I ain’t going nowhere with it. You pay, you’ll get it delivered. Hundred bucks will do it.”
They all ponied up and paid him, then moved their stuff out of the Suburban and into the bed of Daryl’s truck. Mario hooked up the winch and pulled the SUV up onto the wrecker.
Conner and Jonathan had to bend their legs and practically lie against each other to fit into the back of Daryl Teague’s Ford. Daryl drove with the window down, his three-fingered left hand hanging out the side of the truck, a tiny cigarette clutched between them. They all shivered in the cold. The cigarette glowed in the night air.
“You boys look a little banged up. Rough night?”
“Long day,” Michael said. “Couple assholes.”
“Huh. Larry can be that way sometimes. Him and his group, that’s their way. People up here get territorial, is all. Especially now with the new highway system coming through. Gonna be lots of development in the coming years. Lot of people were pissed at Bill for agreeing to sell his land. He was standing between the town and the whole project. They weren’t going to be able to build without his thousand acres in Coombs’ Gulch.
