Abandon (16 page)

“You been up there before, Lar?”

“No. I always thought it was too dangerous. If the floor were to give way, it’s a fifty-foot fall. But all things considered, I think it’s worth the risk.”

“How the hell we gonna climb up through that hatch?”

Lawrence pointed back to the bookshelf. “With that ladder.”

Jerrod and Stu pulled the ladder out from under the long bookshelf, hoisted it up, and braced it against the opening.

“Doesn’t exactly look like a Craftsman product,” Isaiah said, grazing his gloved hand across a cracked wooden rung.

“I’ll go up first. Test it.”

“No, she will.” He waved Abigail over. “What’s up there, Lar?”

“I don’t know. Maybe nothing.”

“That wouldn’t bode well for you, for any of you.” He looked at Abigail. “Up you go.”

She grasped the sides of the old ladder and began to climb, carefully easing her weight onto each rung. The fourth one snapped, but she caught herself. The tenth rung was missing. As she neared the top, snow collected in her hair. Then she scrambled out of the hatch, stepping onto the roof of Emerald House.

“Stay in one spot!” Lawrence shouted up at her. “I have no idea how stable it is up there!” She backed away from the opening, leaned against the wrought-iron railing that surrounded this small open veranda, snow blowing so hard into her face that she choked on it, had to cover her mouth with her hands.

Lawrence came up, then Isaiah, Emmett, June, and finally Stu and Jerrod.

Abigail rubbed her arms, and as she stood watching her father, it hit her: There was nothing on this veranda but an inch and a half of snow, and he looked nervous in the beam of her headlamp, like he was trying to pass off Monopoly money for true currency.

“Well,” Lawrence said, kneeling down, inspecting a corner of the veranda, brushing the snow off the stone. “I’m just at a total loss, Isaiah.”

Abigail gripped the iron railing. June and Emmett stood beside her, Isaiah with his back to her, near a skylight that had long since been liberated of its glass.

“
You’re
at a loss,” Isaiah said. The hood of his parka had fallen back, snow collecting in his black hair. “What exactly does
that
mean, Larry?”

“It means . . . it means I don’t know where the gold is. I thought I did, but I don’t. I’m horribly disappointed, believe me.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“But it just isn’t here. I don’t know where else to look, and that’s the truth. So here’s what I’m thinking. We don’t know a thing about you, so what if you three just leave us here, disappear into the night. We never see you again. You never see us. And we never say a word. Not even about Scott. We’ll pretend this never happened.”

“He’s right,” June said, staving off tears. “Emmett and I would just be so grateful to be home again. To put all this behind us. I’m sorry you didn’t find
the gold you were looking for, but can’t this be over now? You men came wearing masks, which tells me that you didn’t come into these mountains intending violence.”

“We could just leave, Isaiah,” Jerrod said. “Scott and Lawrence know more about me than any of us, but I’d be willing to walk.”

Lawrence said, “Look, we could spend tonight in Packer’s mansion, give you guys a chance to head out. I’m telling you, it’d be like this never happened.”

Isaiah stared at the snow-dusted stone beneath his feet. “Stu,” he said, “you got an opinion about this you’d care to toss into the hat?”

“I’m with you, man. Whatever you wanna do, I’m with you.”

Isaiah nodded. He turned around, looked at Abigail and the Tozers, who were standing together on the east side of the veranda. He approached them, faced Emmett.

“I don’t think I caught your name.”

“Emmett Tozer.”

“Cool if I call you Em?”

“Sure. June calls me that all the time.”

“Well, Em.” He pointed at Lawrence. “For this, you can thank that motherfucker.”

He raised the machine pistol to Emmett’s forehead, a red bead drawn between the man’s widening eyes.

June screamed, “No, it’s not his fault!”

The Glock coughed a burst of fire, and the back of Emmett’s head blew out. He dropped to his knees, fell over sideways. In the low light, the blood looked like steaming oil as it blackened and spread through the snow.

June threw herself over her husband’s body, shrieking his name.

Abigail tasted that salt and metal in the back of her throat again.
The worst moments of your life you never see coming.
She turned and spewed over the railing, knew as the bile burned her throat that she’d spend the rest of whatever life she had left trying to sever herself from this moment.

“You happy, Lar, you greedy motherfucker?” Isaiah said, his voice rising. Abigail sank down into the snow. She could barely hear Isaiah speaking over the wind and June wailing, “Em, come back! Don’t you do this!”

“Know what’s gonna happen next?” Isaiah was in Lawrence’s face now, Lawrence backed up into a corner of the veranda behind the hatch. “I’m gonna make that bitch get down on her knees, and you are gonna watch me put a bullet through her head. Then I’m gonna get—”

Lawrence cried, “No, don’t. I’ll—”

Isaiah grabbed his throat. “Don’t ever fucking interrupt me! Then I’m gonna get this bitch”—he pointed at Abigail—“but I’m not shooting this one. I’m gonna take this knife and slowly cut her throat, let you watch her drain.”

Abigail looked at Jerrod, noticed his legs quaking. Stu had pulled the bottle of vodka out of his backpack and begun to work off the cap.

“And then, if you’re still maintaining you don’t know shit . . .” Abigail made herself stand. She wiped her mouth. “. . . I’m gonna go to work on—”

“Isaiah!” Jerrod yelled.

“
What?
”

Jerrod started toward him. They met at the skylight, both men covered in snow.

“What the fuck?”
He pointed at Emmett’s body. “I did not sign up for this shit.”

“What are you saying? You want out? That it?”

“I don’t—”

“You know, you never had the stones to finish the hard shit, did you?”

“I don’t want out. I just . . . You didn’t say it’d be like this.”

“Well, it is, so stop your fuckin crybabyin.”

Isaiah lifted his machine pistol, started toward June, who still lay sobbing on top of her husband. “You watching, Larry?”

“I’ll tell you whatever—”

“You can tell me after. Just wanna be sure you know I am not fucking around with you.”

He stopped and put the gun to the back of June’s head.

Lawrence pushed off the railing, lunged toward Isaiah, screaming, Jerrod and Stu running toward him, Isaiah swinging his machine pistol toward Lawrence, Abigail thinking,
I’m about to watch my father die.

Lawrence’s fourth step brought him past the skylight, and all seven of them suddenly occupied the same twenty-five square feet of floor space.

There was a deep crack, like a rafter fracturing, and the veranda of Emerald House caved in.

The preacher said, “Zeke, I think we should alert the town to—”

“Ain’t arguin with you about it anymore, Stephen.”

“We’ve got vicious murderers roaming—”

Ezekiel spun around. “Do I come into God’s house of a Sunday morning, tell you how to preach a sermon?” Stephen shook his head. “Don’t counsel me how to proceed in matters a law.”

“Zeke.” Gloria grabbed his arm. “Look.” The hillside above town was dotted with smoking cabins, half-buried in snow and tucked into groves of tree-line spruce, web-trodden paths branching from each one to the side street. Bessie McCabe staggered toward them along the path from her cabin, Harriet in her arms, neither dressed for the weather, wrapped only in quilts, Bessie’s flour-sack underpinnings showing through, and no hat to be seen on mother or child as the snow gathered in their hair. Gloria could see that Bessie’s face was flush with cold, the bruises on her left cheek turning purple and yellow around the edges.

“Everthing all right?” Ezekiel asked.

“Seen you comin up the street,” she whispered, trembling.

“You’re poorly,” Gloria said.

Bessie looked downslope toward town, her eyes stormy with the weight of some damning choice. “I believe he’s cut his wolf loose.”

“Who?” the preacher asked.

Tears were running over her lips now. “My Billy.” And Bessie’s bare hand
emerged from the blankets, grasping the bar of gold, snow falling on it, melting, making the yellow metal glisten. “He give me this this mornin, all wrapped up, like some Christmas present. Wouldn’t tell me nothin of how he come to have it.”

“Where’s your husband right now?” Ezekiel asked.

“He left a few hours ago with Mr.Wallace.”

“Know where they went?”

“Rode off toward the mine.”

“You better come on with us.”

“Why?”

Ezekiel leaned in, whispered in her ear for the sake of the child. “Packer and his ladies been murdered up at Emerald House.”

The bar of gold dropped from her hand and sank into the snow.

“What you sayin, Mr.Curtice?”

“In a town of a hunerd twenty-three souls, they ain’t much breathin space for coincidence.”

“They killed ’em? Billy and Oatha—”

“Nobody knows exactly who done what yet. Now, was it just Billy and Mr.Wallace, or was there more men?”

“I think it’s just the two a them. You gonna hurt him?”

“I’m gonna bring him in. Whether or not he gets hurt or kilt, that’s his choice. He do that to you?”

Bessie brought her hand to the bruises, as if to hide them, eyes alight with shame.

“Daddy done it,” Harriet said.

Ezekiel brushed his gloved hand across the little girl’s cheek.

“I’m real sorry about that, sweetie. He ought not’ve.”

Ezekiel squatted down, lifted the gold bar out of the snow, stood mesmerized by it, trying to disavow the shot of adrenaline it pushed through his veins, thinking if there was anything left in him of that man he used to be, he’d ride up to the mine with an entirely different purpose, caught himself half-wishing he’d stumbled onto an opportunity like this back in the old days.

He handed the bar to the preacher. “You better keep this. Well, come on, ladies. No point in y’all standin out here, freezin in them rags.”

They walked up the street, then veered onto the path to the Curtices’ little steeple-notched cabin, a barrel for a chimney pot, a root cellar on the south wall, and a sod roof that in the summertime sprouted sunflowers. At the front door, Ezekiel stopped, said, “Gloria, bring my rifle and the revolver for Stephen. We’ll be needin a box a cartridges for each.”

As the women went inside, Stephen said, “I’ll not carry a gun, Zeke.”

“You kiddin me?”

The preacher shook his head. “But I will ride up with you.”

“The hell you gonna do if they start shootin?”

“I’m praying it won’t come to that.”

“You see the same thing I saw up on the roof a Emerald House? That look like the handiwork a men who talk things out? Hell, we’ll have to get Doc now.”

Gloria returned with the old Schofield in one hand, Ezekiel’s sawed-off Winchester in the other. Bessie was bawling inside, Harriet whispering, “It’s all right, Mama. It’s all right. Don’t cry.”

Ezekiel took the box of cartridges, his carbine by the barrel, said, “Man a God don’t want the revolver, but you hang on to it. Better pull in the latch-string and fort up. Don’t go out. Don’t open it for nobody. Billy or Oatha or some rough-lookin feller come by, you know what to do.” She nodded. “Better go on, load up that Schofield now. Remember how I showed you?”

Gloria threw her arms around his neck, felt the sandpaper of his face against hers, caught that smell of his that still melted her knees. “You come back to me,” she whispered.

He lifted his hat and pulled off Gloria’s sealskin cap so he could kiss her forehead and tug at those blond curls.

“Always have, Glori. Always will.”