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“Guess. Walk to me, bub. Play it right and you can have another season to run.”
“I’ve heard about you.”
“Good. Now do what you’re told.”
“You were in El Sal. So was I. Except I wasn’t fighting for the Communists.”
“I was killing Communists before your mother defecated you into the world, asshole. Now move it.”
“You know the expression: A guy just has to try.”
Clete raised his left hand, patting at the air, his body hunched forward like that of a man frightened for his own life rather than someone else’s. “Don’t do it, pal. Think of all the beer you didn’t drink, the steaks you didn’t eat, the broads you didn’t call up. What you’re thinking now is the ultimate impure thought. Look at me. No, no, don’t do that. Look at me. Put your hand back in front of— Oh shit.”
The man in the black T-shirt had his hand on the grips of the .45 stuck down in the back of his belt. He was grinning, his arm twisted behind him, his body contorted when Clete pulled the trigger. He made a whooshing sound, like a man who had stepped on a sharp rock. Then he sat down heavily in the mud, one hand pressed against the wound in his stomach, his head lowered as he stared at the blood on his palm, his hair separating on his scalp in the rain.
Clete picked up the .45 and went through the back door like a wrecking ball.
I DON’T THINK I learned a great deal from life. Certainly I never figured out any of the great mysteries: why the innocent suffer, why wars and pestilence seem to be our lot, why evil men prosper and go unpunished while the poor and downtrodden are oppressed. The lessons I’ve taken with me are rather simple and possibly aren’t worthy of mention. But these are the two I remember most. When I was a young lieutenant in the United States Army and about to experience my first combat, I was very afraid and had no one to whom I could confess my fear. I was sure my ineptitude would cause not only my own death but also the deaths of the men and boys for whom supposedly I was an example. Then a line sergeant told me something I never forgot: “Don’t think about it before it starts, and don’t think about it when it’s over. If you have nightmares, there’s always an all-night bar open someplace, if you don’t mind the tab.”
The larger lesson I took from the sergeant’s statement was the implication about the arbitrary and accidental nature of both birth and death. Just as we have no control over our conception and our delivery from the birth canal, the hour of our death is not of our choosing, and neither are the circumstances surrounding it. An admission of powerlessness is not a choice. That’s just the way things are.
I can’t say these lessons ever brought me peace of mind. But they did allow me to feel that in the time I was on earth, I at least saw part of the truth that governs our lives.
When Clete came through the kitchen door, he had no idea what to expect. Kermit Abelard and Robert Weingart and Carolyn Blanchet were all standing under the kitchen light. Maybe it was the presence of a woman that caused Clete to hesitate, or the fact that Kermit did not have a weapon in his hand. Or perhaps his eyes did not adjust quickly enough to the change from darkness to light. But by the time he had swung the silenced Smith & Wesson toward Weingart, Weingart had raised his .25 semiauto and pointed it directly at Clete’s chest. Then, coward that he was, his face was averted when he pulled the trigger, lest Clete get off a shot before he went down.
The report of the .25 was like the pop of a firecracker. The bullet punched a small hole in the strap of Clete’s shoulder holster, inches above his heart. He crashed against the breakfast table, dropping the silenced semiautomatic to the floor, the .45 falling loose from his pants. I could see him fighting not to go down, struggling to get his .38 loose from its holster.
Carolyn Blanchet was screaming hysterically. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Molly cut through the tape on her ankles and tear the tape off her mouth and come toward me. I extended my wrists behind me, then felt the weight of the scissors wedge between my hands, the blades slicing into the tape. In the kitchen, Kermit was shouting at Weingart, “Shoot him! Shoot him! Shoot him!”
Clete straightened up, grasping the back of a chair with one hand, lifting his .38 in front of him. Weingart shot him again, this time high up on the right arm. Clete went down in the chair, doubling over. For a second, there was no sound in the house except the wind blowing a shower of pine needles across the roof. I took the scissors from Molly’s hand and freed my ankles. “Get Alf loose and go out the front,” I said.
“You have to come with us,” she said.
“Clete’s going to die,” I said.
“We’ll get help,” she said, her voice starting to break.
“I’ll never leave Clete,” I said. “My shotgun is in the closet. You guys go on. Please.”
“He’s right, Molly. Come on,” Alafair said, getting to her feet, the tape still hanging from her wrists and ankles.
I ran into the bedroom and pulled my cut-down twelve-gauge from the back of the closet. My hands were shaking as I got down the box of shells from the shelf and thumbed five rounds in the magazine. Then I dipped another handful of shells out of the box, stuffed them in my pocket, and went into the kitchen.
Clete still sat in the chair, his face white with the first stages of shock. The phone on the counter had been torn from the jack, the receiver broken in half. Carolyn Blanchet was huddled in a corner, trembling all over, her makeup running, her mouth contorted. Weingart and Kermit were gone, and so were my .45 and the silenced semiauto.
“Where are they?” I said.
“Bagged ass down the slope, I think. They were talking about a boat,” Clete said. “Maybe down toward The Shadows.”
His breathing was ragged, the color leaching out of his hands and arms. A single rivulet of blood was running from the hole above his heart. He looked into my face. “I know what you’re thinking, big mon,” he said. “Go after them. Don’t stay here. If they come back through the house, it’ll be to clip us both. Remember what I said. It’s a black flag. Don’t let these guys skate again.”
I turned to Carolyn Blanchet. “You get off your ass and take care of him,” I said. “You do whatever he says. If I come back and he’s not all right, you’ll leave here in a body bag.”
I went out the back door into the yard. I could see Tripod on the tree limb above his hutch, shaking with fear, his chain dripping from his neck. The rain had slackened, but the fog was thicker and whiter, the trees and camellia bushes glistening with it. Out on the bayou, I could hear a powerboat coming upstream from The Shadows. I suspected it was the one that Kermit and Weingart had planned to use for their escape. But the boat did not stop or pull into the bank. Instead, the driver gave it the gas, and a moment later it shot past the back of my property, whining into the distance.
Kermit and Weingart were on their own.
“Give it up,” I said.
