Blacktop Wasteland(73)

Taking a deep breath, he tried sitting up again. He didn’t vomit this time, but he sure wanted to. An owl hooted at him from somewhere. He listened for any other sounds. Like people walking or voices commiserating about him. But all he heard were the usual sounds of the forest at night. He hesitated then sent his left hand on an expedition. Up his right arm. When his fingers found the gash, he pressed his lips together tight and groaned. The gash was about two inches long but not deep. The bullet had grazed him. He flexed his right hand. His fingers moved, albeit begrudgingly. He touched his forehead. A knot the size of a chicken egg was sitting just above his left eyebrow and a little to right of the laceration that had bled into his eyes. He checked his watch. The pale glow of its face was not enough to draw anyone’s attention. It was two thirty in the morning. They had chased the guy into the woods around eleven. He’d been out for more than three hours.

Kelvin had been dead for three hours. His cousin, his best friend, had been dead for three hours.

Ronnie Fucking Sessions. He should have seen that coming. He should have been prepared. He’d seen Ronnie’s face when Lazy had spilled that money across his desk. That lean and hungry look that said Ronnie did not want to give up his hard-earned loot. Beauregard had seen that look and dismissed it. Foolishly he had assumed Ronnie’s desire to live would outweigh his greed. What he hadn’t counted on was that for Ronnie, a life without money was no life at all. Now because of his avarice and Beauregard’s hubris, Kelvin was dead.

Beauregard closed his eyes. He had to get up and he had to get moving. Kia and the boys were in the crosshairs of a movie-loving hillbilly psycho. A hillbilly who expected a van full of precious metal to be delivered to him no later than Sunday night. His inside man would tell him that the van never made it. Lazy would then sit and wait for a phone call that was never going to come. Lazy would surmise they had double-crossed him. He’d send shit-kicking Freddy Krueger after him. Ariel was safe because they didn’t know about her. But Kia and the boys had to get out of town. Beauregard reached in his pocket. He pulled out the burner phone. It was broken. Probably crushed in the fall.

“Shit,” he croaked.

He’d have to climb back up the hill. The van would be long gone. He’d left the keys in the ignition. Another mistake. The pickup and the box truck would still be there though. Ronnie probably had the keys to the box truck. That was okay. He could hot-wire the truck. Or he could get the keys out of Kelvin’s pocket and drive the pickup truck.

Grief as strong as an earthquake hit him, sending tremors throughout his whole body. He felt his esophagus spasm but his stomach had nothing left to give so he just dry-heaved. Groaning, Beauregard smacked himself. Hard. After a few seconds he did it again. The tremors began to subside. He rotated onto his hands and knees. Taking a deep breath, he pushed himself to his feet. The world around him shimmered like he was walking through a wall of water. Beauregard closed his eyes and steadied himself. One more deep breath and he began climbing up the embankment. Each step was like walking through molasses. He stumbled, caught himself and kept going. The closer he got to the top the slower he climbed. He knew what was waiting for him up there. He knew what he would see once he scaled this nondescript North Carolina hill. But he had to see it. Not just because he needed a set of keys.

He deserved it. Deserved to be confronted with the blank emptiness that would be etched on what was left of Kelvin’s face. So, he climbed. He pulled at saplings and clawed the moist earth and climbed. He marched toward his penance with a grim determination.

Kelvin’s dead eyes greeted him as he reached the top of the hill. His head lolled to one side and his mouth was agape. The wound in his cheek was a raw red crater. Beauregard could see jagged remains of Kelvin’s teeth through the hole.

Beauregard dropped to the ground next to Kelvin’s body. Ants were crawling across his face. Some trundled in and out of his open mouth. Beauregard grabbed his hand. It was like touching a piece of hard cold wax. Kelvin’s fingers were rigid as stone. Beauregard tried to brush the ants off his face but his hands started to shake. He shook his head and steadied himself. The ants he cleaned off climbed back on Kelvin’s face with the pitiless proficiency of a hive mind. Beauregard tried to close his remaining good eye but the lid refused to stay down. He lowered his head until it was lying on Kelvin’s chest. The fetid aroma of fresh death was so potent he could taste it. He swallowed it down and dared his stomach to rebel.

“Once I take care of all this I’m gonna come back and bury you right. I promise you that. You should’ve never been here. You never owed me a damn thing,” Beauregard mumbled into Kelvin’s chest. A few moments passed. Beauregard’s mind played him scenes from the past like a home movie spliced together from old 8-millimeter reels. Kelvin and him as kids souping up their bicycles with playing cards stuck in the spokes to replicate the sound of a motorcycle. Kelvin daring him to drive without lights through Callis Road knowing damn well Bug would do it. Kelvin in a tuxedo handing him a ring. Those moments and a thousand more like them slit his soul like razors and flayed it open.

Finally, Beauregard raised his head. He touched his face. The blood, Kelvin’s blood, the driver’s blood, was still dry in the corners of his eyes. He hadn’t cried. He hated himself a little for that but there would be time for tears later. He reached into Kelvin’s front pocket for the keys. He moved over the ground on his hands and knees turning over the soil searching for his gun. He found it a foot from where he and the driver had tumbled to the ground. He put it back in his waistband and slid down the other side of the embankment. As soon as he reached the meadow he saw how the box truck and the pickup were both listing to one side. Both sets of tires on the driver’s side had been slashed.