“Maybe,” said Charlene slowly, “I should start packing a few things.”
“Yeah,” Timmy agreed, nodding. “We might want to go away for a while.”
“A while?” said Lawrence. “How about forever? Don’t you have some like-minded brethren, committed to the same whacko causes, who’ll hide you for a while?”
“Jesus, Timmy,” said Dougie. “You don’t think we could get caught for this, do you?”
“Look,” Timmy said, working up some courage, “we do what we have to do. We’re fighting for ideals that are bigger than just us, okay? We’re sticking with this, we’re not going to turn back now. But yeah, Charlene, you might want to throw a few things together.”
“I want to take my Hot Wheels collection,” Dougie said.
“What’s going on?”
We all turned our attention to the open doorway. There stood Jeffrey, in slippers and a pair of striped pajamas, his hair all tousled.
“Why’s everybody out here?” he said. “What’s everybody doing?”
“Get back to bed!” Timmy shouted. That prompted Jeffrey to look over Timmy’s way, and then his eyes landed on me, and Lawrence, and Dad.
“What are they doing in there?” Jeffrey said. He smiled at Lawrence. “Hi,” he said, and made a small wave.
“Hi, Jeffrey,” Lawrence said. “How’s it going?”
“Okay,” he said, quietly. He could tell something was going on. Something bad. “Why are they all locked up?” he asked his grandfather.
“Jeffrey, go back to the house. Charlene, take him back to the house.”
“But I don’t get it. Why are they there? Did they try to steal something?”
Timmy pounced on that. “That’s right. They were trying to steal some tools. These are actually very bad men.”
“That’s not true, Jeffrey,” I said.
“Jeffrey?” It was May, just outside the barn. “Jeffrey, are you in there?”
The boy looked back as his mother, wearing a long pink housecoat, stepped inside. It took her a second to take in the scene. Dougie, Charlene, Timmy, the three of us in the stall. The white van in the middle of the barn.
“What the hell is going on here?” she asked.
Timmy said, “May, take your boy and put him to bed. You know he’s not ever supposed to be out here. You too, for that matter.”
Jeffrey said, “Grandpa, these aren’t bad men! They’re good men! Even that one!” He pointed at Lawrence.
Timmy shook his head in anger. “Jeffrey, I’ve had just about enough-”
“He was really nice to me! He isn’t mean like you!”
Timmy grabbed the boy by the arm and started shaking him. “Why, you little shit, I oughta-”
“Daddy!” May screamed. “Leave him alone!”
Jeffrey was leaning back, trying to break free of his grandfather, who was holding on to him with one hand and trying to swat his cheek with the other. Jeffrey was waving frantically with his free arm, working to deflect the blows.
May ran forward, grabbed her father, which allowed Jeffrey to wriggle free. Now Timmy had to wrestle with his daughter, whom he grabbed by the shoulders and flung to the barn floor.
“I hate you!” Jeffrey screamed at him, and burst into tears.
Timmy stood there, looking down at his daughter, wondering whether he should offer to help her up or not. May was looking from him to Jeffrey and, finally, to me. In addition to this domestic crisis she was having, she seemed to be trying to get her head around why the hell I was penned in with my father and Lawrence.
“Mr. Walker?” she said. I wasn’t sure whether she meant me or my father. She got to her feet, ignoring her father’s outstretched arm, and took three steps toward the stall. “Mr. Walker, what’s going on?” She was directing the question at me, not Dad.
I was thinking, the way things were going, that maybe May was our new last hope. That if she knew the truth, if she knew the extent of her father’s evil, maybe she could do something. That if she were presented with the truth, and could throw it back in Timmy’s face, maybe he’d reconsider what he was going to do.
I said, evenly, “Your father’s getting ready to kill us and a whole lot of other people, May, that’s what’s going on.”
“Shut up!” Timmy shouted at me. “May, get out of here!” He grabbed her by the shoulders and started turning her away.
“Don’t touch her!” Jeffrey shouted, still crying.
“Ask him about your boyfriends!” I shouted. “Ask him what happened to Morton, and Gary!”
May twisted out of her father’s grip, looked back at me. “What?”
“I told you to shut up,” Timmy said.
“What’s he talking about, my boyfriends?”
“It’s not a coincidence,” I said. “First one gets hit by a car, then another gets killed in the woods.”
“Gary?” May said, looking at Timmy. “The hit-and-run?”
Timmy tried to adopt a gentler stance, reaching his hands out to May’s shoulders, but she took a step back. “Honey, you and Jeffrey need to go back to the house. We can talk about this later. We’ve all said a few things that we’re probably going to regret later. And we’re kind of busy out here, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“Busy doing what? What have you been doing out here? You’ve been out here for days, working on something.” She caught a glimpse inside the van. “What’s all this?” She whirled around. “What was he talking about, my boyfriends?”
“He killed them both,” I said. “With help from Wendell and Dougie. And sabotaged your jobs with anonymous phone calls. So you’d have no choice but to come back home.”
May was stupefied. Jeffrey, who had stopped crying, was looking a bit baffled as well.
“That’s not true,” Timmy said softly. “You know I’d never do anything like that.”
May looked at her father as though seeing him for the first time. “You’re a monster,” she whispered. “I guess I’ve always known it, but I’ve never known until now just how big a monster you really are.”
She turned and reached out her hand to grab Jeffrey’s hand. She was about to exit the barn when Charlene stood in her path.
“What?” May said. “Get out of my way.”
Charlene looked over at Timmy, her look cold and dispassionate. Her eyes had no life in them.
Timmy shook his head slowly. “Son of a bitch.” He and Charlene looked into each other’s eyes, neither of them saying a word, but there was plenty of information being exchanged. They were making some hard decisions. Facing up to some cold realities.
“Jesus,” Timmy said, and shook his head again. “Charlene, put the two of them-Jesus H. Christ-put them in the pantry at the back of the house, I don’t know. Lock them in there, and we’ll sort this out later.”
“You’re going to lock up your own daughter?” May asked. “Your own grandson?” Then, screaming, “What are you! What the fuck are you?”
Charlene had the gun in her hand that she’d had earlier, and she nudged May with it. “Come on,” she said. “You and your boy, you got none of my blood, so pulling this trigger wouldn’t be all that hard for me.”
Timmy started to say something, then stopped himself.
Charlene motioned for May and Jeffrey to go through the door ahead of her. She gave May’s shoulder a shove on the way out.
A look of resignation had come over Timmy’s face. What chance did we have, I thought, if he was already considering the possibility of killing his own daughter and grandson?
“That was a stupid, stupid thing to do, telling her those things,” he said to me.
“She should know,” I said. “She should know just what kind of loving father she has.”
Timmy simmered, the air whistling in and out of nostrils.
“It’ll be easier when Wendell gets back here with the others,” he said, as much to himself as to me. “Then we can do everybody at once.”
35
I WANDERED TOWARD THE BACK CORNER of the stall, leaned my head in close to Lawrence’s.