The Savage(13)

Horace came from the truck, told the Widow, “My nerves need no more testing.” He glanced back at Van Dorn. “You shouldn’t have born witness to this, son. Another man having his life taken. For that I apologize.”

Dorn didn’t know what to say. But he guessed they did what needed done and slid into the driver’s seat.

Van Dorn watched from the side mirror as Horace walked to the rear of the store, disappeared around the corner where a GTO sat. A moment of uncomfortable silence passed. Then a door squeaked, slammed shut, and the hot rod screamed to life.

Starting the Ford, Dorn waited for the Widow, who drove up in a burgundy Chevy Silverado. Yelled out the window to him. “We going to the right, be cutting over a few roads, it’ll seem farther than it is but it ain’t.”

Van Dorn nodded. She took to the right. He and the father followed. They lined the back road like three sets of incandescents, mouth to ass.

Behind the wheel, Dorn thought of the world that was taken from Horace and him. Things he once thought genuine. The skills his father held with his hands, turning lumber into furniture, restructuring homes, hunting wild game, preparing it. Things Horace had been learned by his own father. And now they were lost in that world that drained men once good, forced their hands, wilted them to bad. Left them with a trail of wrong. Look at them, driving down this road with a murdered man in the bed of the truck. Following this female through the pitch-black night. Dorn’s heart throbbed and his lungs burned and he pressed an index into the CD player, which lit up. Spun a tune, Waylon Jennings singing “Lonesome, On’ry and Mean.”

Dorn wondered if they could trust this Widow. What if she was touring them into a fouler situation than already existed? And Dorn tightened his grip on the steering. His palm damp from nerves. Nosed the Ranger closer to the Widow’s bumper. Taking the winds and curves, hoping she was as trusting as she appeared. Hoped for someplace to rest. Someplace devoid of worry. The harder Dorn tried to wipe the bad from his mind, the worse the thoughts of what he’d watched his father do lulled through him. Knowing if they were ever caught, they’d be charged for the murder of another, and then what would become of them?

Oncoming headlights cut shadows down the faces that navigated the three vehicles. Dorn checked the rearview for someone to brake each and every time. Worried that one of them would turn around. Follow them. Fearing somehow they knew what he carried. But none of the passers did. Headlights drove on, disappeared into an abyss of back-road grit and timber.

The three vehicles progressed over the road as it snaked, dropped, and rose up and over the hills. In and out of the valleys. Trunks and limbs zipped past until the Widow braked hard, turned off Harrison Spring Road and onto a dead end, Jennith Lane. Where at the gravel’s end a cottage-style home sat. The yard lit by floodlights that showed antique parts. Tractor. Plow. Bailer. A road of potholes took them out to a mess of shack-like structures. The Chevy stopped. Van Dorn braked and slid the Ranger into park. The Widow got out of her truck. Her frame glowing phosphorescent in the Ranger’s lamps. She was attractive. Shapely, Dorn thought as she motioned for the father and him to do the same.

They were standing outside their vehicles, and the Widow pointed. “Park the GTO around back of the chicken coop. Let the Ranger ride down the rivets of tire tracks right there and kill the engine. We got us a long walk to carry Gutt, up into the woods along the river. Gonna get us some shovels from the milk house and a few traps to set after we finish the dig.”

Horace wrinkled his complexion, questioned, “Traps?”

“For skunk. Need to make sure we cover what we bury, deter other animals and such away.”

The Widow walked into a shingle-walled structure the same pigment as blood. Came back from it carrying two triangle shovels and a calcified pick. Propped them outside next to the door. Went back inside, came out with the burn of a lantern and several links of chain attached to rusted metal mouths. Horace shook his head and mumbled to Van Dorn, “Hell’ve I gotten us into, boy?”

Van Dorn dug a Maglite from beneath the Ranger’s peeling-vinyl front seat. His bearings uneven but knowing he must show strength like his father. Must be strong. He pushed the light down into the denim of his ass pocket. The Widow rested the tools for digging upon one shoulder, the traps clanging from them. Her other hand led the way with the lantern. Dorn and Horace stepped to the rear of the Ranger, gloved their hands, pushed their wares from the lifeless mass. Horace motioned for Dorn to step back. “I got him, help the Widow with the tools.”

Horace lifted Gutt, broke him down over his shoulder. Dorn took the shovel and the pick from the Widow, placed them over his shoulder, and she led the way.

Humidity and heat delivered the pungent and repulsive scent that wafted from those who no longer breathed as Van Dorn and Horace trekked over the land that lay foreign to them. The Widow guided the two male shapes through the wilderness, panting within the night, twigs and branches marring and scraping their hands and faces and arms until they descended into a sinkhole with the circumference of a large swimming pool but maybe forty to fifty feet deep. Where in its bottom they lay the stiffening hunk of humankind to the side, began to dig at the scorched and hardened earth.

Above them, they were surrounded by shadows of wood and limestone. It was here that Gutt Alcorn would lie in burial. Dorn and Horace rolled his shape into the hole that ran as deep as the father was tall. Man and boy stood damp and stinking. Tips, palms, and complexions smudged and printed by soil. They covered Gutt until there was no more dirt to fill the hole. No words of hymnal were spoken to send Gutt to his Maker or absolve his connection to the world he’d once known. Only the trounce of distancing soles to earth as the Widow wandered back up the steep hill to set her traps for skunk with the father and son following behind her. Climbing back to the top of the meteor-like hole. Lungs burned while their bodies began to feel the loss of energy. The crash from being amped up on violent happenings.