“We can’t defend this end,” Tig said.
“No,” Clint said, “but it makes a helluva lookout post, and we don’t need to defend it, right? There’s no way through here.”
That seemed inarguable to Clint, and to Scott Hughes, too, who was relaxing a few cells down the line and listening in. “I’m sure you guys are going to get yourselves killed one way or another, and I won’t be crying any tears when it happens,” he called, “but Shrink Boy’s right. It’d take a bazooka to blow a hole in this wall.”
On the day two opposing groups of Dooling men armed up, preparing to make war, less than a hundred women were still awake in the Tri-Counties. One was Eve Black; one was Angel Fitzroy; one was Jeanette Sorley.
Vanessa Lampley was a fourth. Earlier that day, her husband finally nodded off in his armchair, allowing Van to do what she had decided to do. Since she had returned home from the prison after shooting and killing Ree Dempster, Tommy Lampley had tried to stay awake with her as long as he could. Van had been glad for the company. A cooking competition show had done him in, though, lulling him to dreamland with a tutorial on molecular gastronomy. Van waited to make sure he was soundly out before she left. She wasn’t about to assign her husband, ten years her senior, with titanium hips and afflicted by angina, the thankless task of somehow taking care of her body for however many years remained to him. Nor did Van have any interest in becoming the world’s most dismal piece of furniture.
Tired as she was, she was still light on her feet, and crept from the room without disturbing his thin sleep. In the garage she got her hunting rifle and loaded it. She yanked up the door, fired up the ATV, and rolled out.
Her plan was simple: cut through the woods to the ridge above the road, breathe in the fresh air, take in the view, jot a note to her husband, and put the barrel under her chin. Goodnight. At least there were no kids to worry about.
She went slow because she was afraid, weary as she was, of crashing. The ATV’s heavy tires sent every root and rock jolting up her thick arms and deep into her bones. Van didn’t mind. The thin rain was all right, too. Despite the exhaustion—her thoughts crawled—she was intensely aware of every physical sensation. Would it have been better to die without knowing you were going to, like Ree? Van could ask the question, but her brain could not break it down in a way that allowed a satisfactory answer. Any response dissolved before it could form. Why did it feel so bad, that she had shot an inmate who would have killed another inmate if she hadn’t? Why did it feel so bad, just to have done her job? Those answers wouldn’t coalesce, either, couldn’t even begin to.
Van arrived at the top of the ridge. She shut off the ATV and dismounted. Far away, in the direction of the prison, a haze of black hovered over the dying day, damp residue from the forest fire that had burned itself out. Directly below, the land descended in a long, easy grade. At the base of the grade was a muddy stream, fattening in the rain. Above the stream a few hundred feet away was a hunting cabin with a mossy roof. Smoke scribbles pumped from the stovepipe chimney.
She patted her pockets and realized that she had completely forgotten paper and something to write with. Van wanted to laugh—suicide really wasn’t that complex, was it?—but a sigh was the best she could manage.
There was no help for it, and her reasoning ought not to be that hard to figure out. If she were found at all, that was. And if anyone cared. Van unstrapped the rifle from her back.
The door of the cabin banged open just as she located the barrel against the shelf of her chin.
“He just better still have that fucking boom-tube,” said a man, his voice carrying crisp and clear, “or he’ll wish that dogcatcher had finished the job on him. Oh, and bring along the scanner. I want to keep up on what the cops are doing.”
Van lowered her rifle and watched as two men climbed into a shiny Silverado truck and drove away. She was sure she knew them, and looking like they did—a couple of rode-hard and put-away wet woods-rats—it wasn’t from any chamber of commerce awards ceremony. Their names would have come to her immediately if she hadn’t been so sleep-deprived. Her mind felt full of mud. She could still feel the jouncing ATV, even though it was no longer moving. Phantom dots of light went zooming across her vision.
When the truck was gone, she decided to visit the cabin. There would be something to write on inside, if only the back of a calendar years out of date. “And I’ll need something to pin it to my shirt,” she said.
Her voice sounded foggy and foreign. The voice of someone else. And there was someone else, standing just beside her. Only when she turned her head, the someone was gone. That was happening more and more: watchers lurking at the farthest reach of her vision. Hallucinations. How long could you stay awake before all rational thought broke down and you lost your mind completely?
Van remounted her ATV and drove it along the ridge until the land descended and she could switchback along the rutted track that led to the cabin.
The cabin smelled of beans, beer, fried deermeat, and man-farts. Dishes cluttered the table, the sink was filled with more, and there were clotted pots on the woodburning stove. On the mantel was a picture of a fiercely grinning man with a pick over his shoulder and a countryman’s battered fedora pulled so low on his head that the brim bent the tops of his ears. Looking at the sepia-toned photo, Vanessa realized exactly who it was she had seen, because her father had pointed out the man in that picture to her when she had been no more than twelve. He had been going into the Squeaky Wheel.
“That is Big Lowell Griner,” Daddy had said, “and I want you to keep clear of him, honey. If he should ever say hello to you, say hello back, ain’t it a nice day, and keep walking.”
So that’s who those two were: Big Lowell’s no-account boys. Maynard and Little Low Griner, big as life and driving a new pickup when they were supposed to be jugged over in Coughlin, awaiting trial for, among other things, a murder Kitty McDavid had witnessed, and agreed to testify about.
On a pine-paneled wall of the short corridor that probably led to the cabin’s bedrooms, Van saw a battered notebook hanging from a piece of string. A sheet from that would do just fine for a suicide note, but she suddenly decided she wanted to stay awake and alive at least a little longer.
She left, glad to escape the stink, and drove her ATV away from the cabin as fast as she dared. After a mile or so, the track emptied into one of Dooling County’s many dirt roads. Dust hung on the left—not much, on account of the drizzle, but enough to tell her which way the fugitives had turned. They had a good lead on her by the time she reached Route 7, but the land here was downsloping and open, which made it easy to see the truck, diminished by distance but clearly headed for town.
Van slapped herself briskly across each cheek and followed. She was wet through now, but the cold would help her stay awake a little while longer. If she were on the lam from a murder charge, she’d be halfway to Georgia by now. Not these two; they were headed back to town, no doubt to do something nasty, as was their wont. She wanted to know what it was, and maybe stop it.
Atonement for what she’d had to do to Ree was not out of the question.
CHAPTER 11