“Fuck!”
The kid was looking at him now. The big knife was pointed vaguely in his direction. “It better start.”
The man spoke around the cigarette:“No shit.”
He was trying hard not to sound afraid, but inside he was coming apart. He couldn’t afford to blow this. Not when they were so close. He knew the kid was just looking for an excuse to gut him and resume the chase on his own. So he sent out a silent prayer and twisted the key again.
The engine sputtered, caught, and roared to life.
He let out a big breath and grinned at the kid. “Have faith, kid. They ain’t gettin’ away.”
He gunned the engine and the car lurched forward.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The night was cold, the chill cutting easily through her sweater and the shirt beneath. Allyson scooted closer to the crackling campfire and rubbed her hands together. The warmth from the fire helped, but all in all she’d rather be back inside, huddled beneath a blanket with Chad’s naked body spooned against her back. But Camp Whiskey’s inhabitants had warmed to her somewhat in the aftermath of her close call in the woods. This was the first time she’d been invited to hang out at one of these little gatherings of what she still thought of as the “inner circle,” and she was determined to make the best of the rare social outing. She wanted them to see that she was a good person, a friendly and warm person, and that none of them had anything to fear from her.
Hell, she just wanted to fit in.
Someone on the opposite side of the campfire strummed an acoustic guitar and the low babble of conversation abruptly ceased. The man with the guitar was sitting cross-legged and was wearing a heavy denim-and-wool coat. Jim was stretched out on the ground next to him, but now he sat up and withdrew a harmonica from a pocket of his brown shirt. Firelight glinted on the polished silver surface of the instrument as Jim brought it to his mouth and began to blow. The guitar player intensified his strumming and the two soon found a bluesy rhythm that made Allyson bob her head as she listened. The jam went on for a few minutes. Then Jim lowered the harmonica and began to sing.
A shiver went up her spine at the sound of his voice. Chad returned from his trip to the outhouse and sat next to her, draping an arm around her shoulders. She snuggled closer and laid her head on his shoulder.
Jim paused in his singing to blow a few more bluesy notes on the harmonica. Then the old singer surged to his feet and belted out the song’s chorus with a passion that was exhilarating to see:
“Devil come a’ risin’
Devil gonna come
Devil on the highwaaaaaaaaay
Devil on the way”
Jim’s whole body was moving. Or at least that’s the way it looked to Allyson from the other side of the campfire. He was doing a kind of Ray Charles headroll while the rest of his body rocked to the beat the guitarist was now thumping out on the body of his guitar. Jim looked like a man possessed as that beat intensified, his facial features twisting and twitching, his hands held out before him in a kind of supplication. Allyson watched the performance with mounting awe. There was an undeniable electricity in the air. And no wonder. The man was a legend for good reason.
The beat slowed but grew heavier, the other guy slapping the guitar’s body with the flat of his palms as Jim resumed singing:
“Devil come a’ risin’
Devil gonna come
Devil at the crossroads
Think I might explode”
Jim abruptly raised a clenched fist high in the air and struck a rigid pose. The guitar player ceased his thumping, shifted the guitar in his lap, and began picking out a subdued, haunting melody, a series of wistful notes that felt like a cold breeze rolling across an open plain.
Jim slowly lowered his fist and finished the song in an equally subdued manner:
“Reckon time has come to pay that bill
Devil comin’ up that hill
Lord, I always knew this day would come
Time to get…gone.”
The last word was spoken rather than sung. Jim lowered his head and held his hands clasped before him as the guy with the guitar plucked a few final notes, the last of which seemed to hang suspended in the air for a long, achingly lovely moment. Then it was gone and there was just the sound of the campfire and the ambient noises of the wilderness at night.
Allyson released a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.
A young woman to her left said, “That was incredible. What was that?”
Chad craned his head to look past Allyson. “That was ‘Pay The Devil,’ an old blues standard.”
Jim was still standing on the other side of the fire. He put the harmonica away and tapped a cigarette from a pack. “Man’s correct. Blind Cat Jones’s version from the 1930s is probably the best known.” He lit the cigarette and rolled it into a corner of his mouth. “Used to have it on an old 78.” He smiled around the cigarette and blew out a puff of smoke. “Long gone now, like most things from my past.”
Allyson surprised herself by speaking up. “I’ve heard that.” She met Jim’s gaze across the campfire and felt goose bumps form on her flesh as the corners of his mouth lifted in a small smile. “Years ago I saw a PBS documentary about delta blues. Blind Cat’s version was beautiful, but yours was just amazing.”
Jim exhaled more smoke. “My humble thanks to you, Allyson. And now, if you good people don’t mind, I’ll be retiring for the evening.”
He flipped the cigarette butt into the fire and began to move back in the direction of the cabins. A pair of machine-gun-toting men in camos fell in behind him and trailed him down the slope. Some of the others seated around the fire gathered their things and began to make their exits as well. Allyson stayed where she was, watching Jim and his guards move in and out of shadows as they moved downhill. He disappeared through a door when they reached their destination and the guards moved to flanking positions at each side of the little cabin. She wondered what his inner life must be like. Did he live wholly in the present, or did he spend a lot of time thinking about the lost glories of his past? Did he ever regret the strange path he’d embarked upon in the early part of the 1970s? She hoped to talk to him about these things at some point. She suspected there was much he could teach her about coping with regret.
Allyson and Chad eventually joined the slow-motion exodus, rising to their feet and walking hand-in-hand toward their own cabin.
The bottle of Beam was calling to him again. Jim dropped the cigarettes and harmonica on a table and picked the bottle up by the neck. He looked at the brown liquid inside the bottle. The stuff didn’t control him as completely as it had in his youth-he’d be dead for real otherwise-but booze remained a significant factor in his life. He’d reduced his daily intake to a small fraction of what it had once been, both to improve his health and prepare for the struggle he knew was on the horizon. But sweet lady alcohol was always there in the background. He drank at a measured pace throughout the day, careful to never get too intoxicated. At night he would indulge a little more deeply, but even then he remained cognizant of his responsibilities.
He was a leader now. But more than that, a symbol of a past victory for the refugees from Below. They would naturally look to him for inspiration and guidance. It was a role in which he still felt some discomfort. Within him there yet lurked a faint spark of the wild spirit that had driven him to such reckless extremes in the past. That part of him wanted to down the whole bottle of Beam, consequences be damned.